


Braveheart

by ShunRenDan



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Adventure, Agrabah (Disney), Angst, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Slow Burn, The Black Cauldron - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 17:58:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19835563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShunRenDan/pseuds/ShunRenDan
Summary: Through green fire and black sand, Riku and his unlikely apprentice battle the dark.





	1. The Cave of Wonders

**Author's Note:**

> “Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back--in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”

_Maleficent’s hand rested on his shoulder, her long, pale fingers like claws that sent shivers down his spine. He could feel her gaze on the back of his neck as each nail drummed against his clavicle. Together, they stared out into a vast abyss of green flame. A hardscrabble blade waited at his waist, looped through his belt like a hard-fought prize. Souleater’s edge was already full of little nicks and cuts, scars of battles hard-won. In its pommel, a single, unblinking eye stared out into the abyss with them._

_Veilfire was the source of her power, and its price was fit only for those folly-ridden beings who dared shorten their own lives. It was a pyrrhic sort of strength for most. For Maleficent, it was but a toy. Her life was unending. She would be there when the last light twinkled out of the sky, and when the dark claimed it all. Only fifteen, the promise of power so potent was hard to resist._

_“Do you understand what this is, boy? This power? The danger it poses?”_

_“Yes,” he lied._

_“Then make it your own.”_

* * *

Radiant Garden was a brave old world, its skyline dominated by aging, shingle towers that stretched on until they hit the dark, stone walls that were its borders. Beyond them, a crystalline lake spilled forth into evergreen daggers that struck toward the sky in defiance of the gray-purple ash that birthed them.

Riku wasn’t sure what specific event pitched the world into the darkness of its past, but it wasn’t hard to see the aftermath or the way a memory of shadow darkened the hearts of its inhabitants. He could see it in the stonework, the grandiosity of the gardens, and the quiet pride left in the hearts of its newest generation of guardians.

Three years after staring into the abyss, Riku knew better than to call himself a guardian of anything.

He was not there to protect Radiant Garden, a world that never needed him in the first place. He was there to shop, to resupply, and perhaps to visit an old friend that shouldn't have wanted to see him.

Naminé was kind, but he knew what she saw when she looked at him — the ghost of a boy who never got to grow old. Riku kept that boy’s face, so similar to his own, in mind as he plucked an apple from a produce stand and left a ball of munny in its place.

The travel bag slung over his shoulder was full of supplies: rations for the week ahead, the collapsed innards of a tent that was far bigger on the inside than the outside, and a host of climbing equipment were the bulk of his day’s purchases.

The world he strolled through was far more useful than the world he remembered leaving behind, the one he nearly condemned. Its people were stronger, a little less weary and leering. Not distrustful enough to refuse him their business, which was a marked improvement that he took in stride. It took him only an hour to gather all he needed for his return trip to Prydain, a world so steeped in darkness that it may as well have been a grave.

At the thought of a grave, Riku risked a glance at the castle that lorded over the city. A gilded thorn against a sky of bruised clouds, it was a testament to the world’s remaining glories. Home to Ansem the Wise, a man Riku still considered DiZ.

He wasn't a fan.

Nor was he so fond of the way that he kept Naminé as a pet-daughter. She wasn’t trapped, or kept against her will, but he understood the obligation she felt to DiZ and his apprentices.

She deserved something more real. It felt strange to him, to see her locked up in the castle. Once the Organization’s caged bird, she was due a better life. One that didn’t involve keeping her trapped within dreary walls or gardens that promised better days.

At the thought of her, the phone in his pocket vibrated as if on cue.

He drew the little, violet device from his jacket and glanced down at the display, where a new notification told him that his arrival hadn’t gone unnoticed. Expressionless, he tapped the little ping on the screen and pulled up the text message — it was a short missive from Naminé.

_It’s good to see you,_ she wrote, _on the days you stop by._

_I’ll come by soon then,_ he replied, thumb dragging across the screen a little clumsily.

He wasn’t as technologically illiterate as Sora. He knew how to use a phone. He just never really cared to reply to the legion of people that reached out to him after his best friend’s disappearance. He didn’t know Ventus very well, and Roxas’s friends weren’t his friends. Roxas wasn’t his friend either, really, but he didn’t deign to text Riku. He didn’t need Riku as a replacement for Sora, and Riku didn’t feel comfortable using him for that either.

Kairi sent him photographs of everything she encountered, and he did reply to those every once in awhile. Xion’s messages were typically from places of concern, and he didn’t know how to respond, so he didn’t.

Strangely enough, he found he most often replied to Isa, a man he never spoke to in the dark days they now struggled to leave behind. His messages were often brief, succinct questions regarding the various problems Twilight Town now faced. Every once in a while, they related more toward an understanding of the Keyblade, likely meant to help Lea in his eye-roll inducing quest for mastery.

Naminé was the only one who got a frequent response. He owed that much to her, and reflected on that debt as he navigated his way through the winding city streets to the gates of the castle. They were friends, he thought, and her messages were often so neutral in tone that he didn’t feel an obligation to reply to her. That made the act itself a lot simpler, and so he favored her for that. His debts to her were all self-imposed.

The castle that DiZ called home was blissfully easy to find. Its gates opened up into a large, rustic square. Riku trudged through both and up the stairway that led to the elaborate, stonework entrance.

Dilan and Aeleus were waiting there to greet him, their stony faces blocked by an iron indifference. Aeleus was a lot larger than the comparatively lean, black-haired Dilan. His broad shoulders and the massive axe at his side were both dangers, capable of laying low any foe without an equal strength to meet them. Riku nodded to him first, aware that the other man knew him in a way that Dilan did not.

Rather, that he knew someone like him.

“You have business here?” He asked.

“Naminé,” Riku replied simply.

The two men parted ways and let Riku pass into the castle’s innards. Its walls were comprised of white stonework and carefully cleaned floors that reminded him a little of Disney Castle. It was an organized affront to all things that balked in the face of the light, and Riku thought it a little offensive for exactly that reason. The watchful eyes of guards and attendants alike found no purchase on his shoulders as he made his way to the gardens, where elaborate stonework gave way to greenery that put the patchwork diagrams outside to shame.

Naminé waited for him among the flowers, her white dress a lily planted beneath a gazebo at the center of the hedge maze DiZ built for her. Her lithe fingers plucked a dark, purple-looking flower from its perch on a wall of leaf-and-weed that messily reached into the gazebo, and she offered it to him with a smile as he drew close and put his bag down at her feet.

“Riku,” she greeted him by name.

He clumsily accepted the flower, and moved to put it in his pocket — he really didn’t know what else to do with it — but she laughed, reached to take it back, and tucked it in his ear so that it poked out from behind the curtain of his silver hair.

It didn’t settle well against the bandages lining his cheek, the dirt across his nose, or the messy spikes that dominated the back of his head. He looked a mess, felt about like he looked, and figured that her gesture was probably meant to help clean him up a little. He couldn’t be sure, exactly, what else it might’ve meant.

“It’s good to see you,” he said. “Did you see me land?”

“No. Just had a feeling you were in town.”

She always had a sixth sense for that sort of thing. It was like she could sense the light in others, and see the way it gathered. She had an eye for fireflies, and a knack for collecting them. It was no wonder that Hollow Bastion’s old guardians remained in the city, invited by her diplomatic nature to build a better world alongside her and DiZ.

“Right,” he muttered in response.

She laughed.

“You don’t have to be so formal. You’re always so… uptight, when you come to see me.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said, turning to lead the way down a winding garden path.

Riku followed after her, not really sure what to say. He liked speaking with her, but that was one of the most common problems he ran into. What could he say to her, or offer her other than a smile and some support?

“The city’s doing well,” he finally decided.

“Reconstruction is almost complete,” she agreed. “Everyone’s been so helpful. Really, I’m grateful.”

“There’s a ‘but’ coming.”

“Not quite. Just…”

She knotted her fingers together as they walked, eyes elsewhere.

“I don’t feel very useful. Everyone else is doing so much. I’m not great at building things, and I can’t draw designs for buildings. I can’t fight very well, either, though I’ve tried to learn a little.”

“Why would you need to fight?”

“There are still some Heartless out there, lurking in the woods.”

“The woods that were a massive, purple ditch a few months ago?”

“They sometimes try to enter the city, but…”

“There’s a defense system for that. The one that Leon and the restoration committee built.”

Naminé nodded, coming to a stop at a fork in the road. “It’s helpful, but some do still get through every now and again.”

“I can help,” he suggested. “It wouldn’t be a problem.”

She hummed in response to that idea. He got the idea that she didn’t like the thought of him throwing himself into danger just to help her. He went on, elaborating a little on her problem for her.

“The Heartless are magical creatures. Magic, especially dark magic, usually has a source. Think of it like having a thorn in your hand. There’s only bleeding because there’s a thorn — so if you pluck the thorn out, the bleeding stops. You can heal the wound.”

“You’re saying there’s someone who was turned to the darkness out there, in the woods?”

“Maybe.”

That thought seemed to unsettle her a little.

“Can’t save everyone,” he thought aloud. “Some people are always going to see the darkness as a better way.”

“I was just hoping we’d talk about something a little more lighthearted, is all. We never really get to talk about… normal things. I’d like to get to know you.”

Her frank nature brought a little warmth to his cheeks. To hide that, he led the way away from the fork, taking the right hand path that circled around toward the gazebo again.

“I’ll see what I can’t find in the woods,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’ll get my things and take the ship over the woods, see if I can’t detect anything out there. If it’ll make your life a little easier, I really don’t mind. Can’t stay all that long, though.”

“You’ve got somewhere to be?”

Riku nodded, and though he couldn’t see her face as he snatched his bag from the ground, he got the feeling that the thought of his departure unsettled her too.

“You haven’t been here very long.”

“I was just stopping by.”

“Are you going somewhere dangerous?”

Prydain was pretty dangerous, but Riku didn’t have the heart to tell her that. She didn’t need to know that a cauldron was turning the populace into darklings, or that the world was on the verge of being swallowed whole. That wasn’t her problem and she didn’t need to worry about those she didn’t know. She had enough problems on her plate.

When he took too long to answer, she cut him off. “Can I help?”

“No,” he said. “You’re better off staying here. It’s not...”

“It’s not safe.”

Naminé frowned, and her arm dipped behind her back like it always did when her curiosity was piqued. Riku slung his bag over his shoulder and watched her for a second, not really sure what to say. He knew she wasn’t a damsel and she was no longer in distress. That didn’t mean he wanted to throw her headfirst into danger. She deserved better than that, and it wasn’t her place to dive into such a burdensome risk.

She was technically a princess of light, after all. Kairi was one, and she was once Kairi’s nobody. They had the same pure heart, and it was easy to see Kairi’s beauty in Naminé. Their faces were so similar, but Naminé’s was softer. She wasn’t as broad as Kairi was now, and she was just a touch shorter. Her hips were a little wider, and her lithe fingers weren’t as calloused. She was soft where he and Kairi were roughshod, not yet run ragged by the dark.

He liked that about her.

“I don’t want you to get hurt,” he finally said.

She didn’t like that response one bit.

“Be careful.”

* * *

Thick, billowing chutes of smoke rolled from the plains outside of the Horned King’s Palace as the Highwind cut fast through the clouds. Riku’s fingers clung fast to the rod that held the entry ramp in place, his eyes scanning the skies for any signs of the little, winged creatures that gave him so much trouble on his first exit from the world. As if on cue, they rose as a swarm, wings beating like hearts on their way toward the gummi ship.

Far below, an army of the dead marched over roads both old and shattered. Riku paid them no heed as he kicked off the ramp and dove toward the approaching swarm of Gwythaints, whose reptilian heads and draconic eyes diverted course to catch him on his fall.

He threw both arms out to the side and slowed his fall a second before impact with the cloud of death. Wind snapped at the sides of his face and the borders of his jacket, replaced by the tide of Gwythaints that dared devour him whole.

There was a flash of light, followed by the smell of smoke and a hundred-fold cry.

Riku emerged on the other side of the cloud with Braveheart drawn, its silver borders trailed by smoke. In the sky overhead, the Gwythaint horde turned, determined to chase him downward as he charted a path for the castle’s topmost tower. Below, the bridge to Prydain rumbled with the sound of a thousand marching feet, each one more haggard and ancient than the last. The battle that would decide the world’s fate had begun, and Riku, it seemed, was late.

He turned an instant before the swarm could catch up to him for the second time, Keyblade whirling in the air before him. Monster after monster flew into its edges, his hands spinning wildly to keep the twirl going. Feet from the castle’s tallest tower, they broke off, circling around the windows and leaving Riku to roll across the floor and pop back up onto his feet, caked in years-thick dirt and dust.

He brushed it off of his shoulder, his face, and out of his hair.

Taran and his friends were probably somewhere below, occupied by the antics of the monstrous king they sought to depose. Riku knew they were probably fighting the good fight already, hoping to draw the dark king into a trap of their own making. He warned them against fighting him on their own, but Taran wasn’t a hard boy to predict. He was just like Sora: driven, determined, too brave for his own good.

Sora would’ve gone charging in there on his own, whether or not he had any back up. Taran had that, at least, and that was a good thing. His friends weren’t powerful, but that didn’t matter. Their bond would see them through.

Riku was still brushing the dirt off of his shoulder when he felt a persistent vibration shake his pocket. He pulled his phone out on his way into the hall, glanced down at Naminé’s face reflected on the screen, and answered her call.

“Namine,” he managed, emerging into a large, dilapidated corridor.

The walls were blood-red, either made of clay or splattered by a natural paint he preferred not to think about. The floor beneath his feet was stone, presumably, and made by a rough hand. The Horned King’s castle was far from perfect, but it was a reflection of the monstrosity that ruled over it. At the end of the hall, near the steps that led to the base of the tower he landed in, a wave of armed guards waited.

They turned to face him at once, their eyes glowing gold. Each one was the size of a gorilla, the skin of their arms gone. What remained was savage bone, torn cloth, and the semblance of a life once lived. On the other side of the phone line, Naminé greeted him warmly, pleased that he actually picked up. She looked good, all things considered, if not a little tired. It had been a day or two since he’d seen her last.

“Riku. You aren’t staying safe, are you?”

“No,” he replied, twirling Braveheart in one hand and gripping his phone in the other. “But I can talk. What did you need?”

The monsters rushed him two at a time. He sliced through one with a quick, horizontal cut that slammed into a second. His third and fourth foes came in behind them, axe-blades flashing in the pale light cast by his phone’s screen. Naminé didn’t seem surprised, and if she was, she didn’t say anything to indicate it until after he’d carved through three or four more cauldron-born.

“You could have ignored my call, you know. It’s not that urgent, if you don’t have the time to—”

“It’s fine,” Riku interjected, parrying a longsword as he waded deeper into the crowd of monstrosities. One lashed out with a saber that he smacked aside, only to crumble when his boot slammed hard into its diaphragm. Riku followed through on the motion anyway, bringing his Keyblade down hard on another monster’s head. It, too, faded, replaced by a smear of green smoke that rolled down the stairs. Each monster he defeated met the same fate, their souls drawn to the cauldron swirling in the dungeons far below.

Naminé watched his face, impassive, as he carved through a half dozen more cruel beasts on his way down the stairs. Each strike left behind a swathe of silver energy that dissipated in the wake of his swinging Keyblade, each cleave opening a little more of the hole he needed to forge on his way down the steps.

“Are you sure this is a good time?”

Riku slammed a slow-to-turn Cauldron-born into the wall and continued on his way, his eyes torn between his phone and the steps he now descended. He wouldn’t have answered anyone else. Besides, he was still dealing with the B-team.

“I can multitask. What do you need?”

In the end, The Horned King proved himself a mighty foe, but his cauldron-born army wasn’t as daunting as an army of pure Heartless. They were less durable; their bodies weren’t built to withstand strikes from a Keyblade. His magic hadn’t been enough to stand up to Riku or the brave heroes that helped him stand against the dark.

Putting out one fire didn’t help much. The dark spread, as it always did, to worlds both familiar and unfamiliar. He didn’t know how Sora managed to stay so cheery as he chased the dark away from every light-hearted world out there.

* * *

After his adventures in Prydain, Riku ventured to the endless dunes of Agrabah, where the sands burned hot beneath a forever-summer sun. There, he sought to find an artifact for Aladdin, who seemed to need it for reasons unknown.

His phone vibrated — just once — while he was embroiled in the thick of battle with a group of seven creatures he’d never seen before. His eyes flickered down to his pocket as he ducked beneath an incoming scimitar swing, rolled around the zombie-like creature that attacked him, and brought Braveheart down hard on another with a lengthy slash that cut it in two. The creature groaned and faded into black sand while Riku spun to smack his original attacker with the flat of Braveheart’s shaft.

It stumbled forward into one of its allies and the two of them went to the ground together, granting Riku the chance he needed to level his off-hand in their direction. A gout of black fire swallowed his wrist and then leapt forward to devour both monsters with a single, hungry roar. The four remaining zombies shuffled around him in the sand, their unseeing eyes affixed to his wrist, and seemed to hesitate.

“Hmph.”

Riku swirled inward, lowering his shoulder and bringing Braveheart to bear with a heavy, horizontal slash that bisected two of them. His final remaining adversaries lunged in the wake of his strike, but the Keyblade master was all too ready. Utilizing his momentum, he swung forward with one, final blow that dropped his last two opponents.

The newest entrance to the Cave of Wonders was now decorated in sparse sprinklings of jet black sand, mingled in with the golden variety he knew well. It was cold to the touch, and it sifted like ash beneath Riku’s boot as he stepped through one of the still-plashing hatches of it while pulling out his phone.

It was a text from Naminé.

Agrabah and Radiant Garden operated on a similar schedule; their axes were aligned in a similar fashion. It was three in the morning for Agrabah. For her, it was mercifully only two. That didn’t make the thought of her up so late any better, but Riku didn’t mind getting a message so late at night. There was a lot on his mind, but he never objected to hearing from her when the days grew long.

Somehow, talking to her always made them shorter, whether it was about business or something less pressing. She was a good conversationalist, and he missed her on the days he couldn’t stop by. Not that he’d have admitted that.

_The Heartless haven't attacked since you left,_ she said. _I thought you may want to know that._

It was good news, but part of him hoped she would have messaged him about something less formal. After their conversation in the gazebo, he thought…

Well, he didn’t know what he thought.

In lieu of responding, he advanced further into the Cave of Wonders, following a collapsed tunnel down into what looked like a normal treasure room. There were artefacts of all kinds littering the floor and the walls, piled high like discarded candy wrappers. Some of them called out to him, whispering of ancient power and promises unkept. Others were more discrete in their appeal. None seemed to be the artifact Aladdin was hoping for.

He wanted a gauntlet of some kind, one sealed away years prior after a battle that Riku hadn’t been there for. It sounded a little like some sort of Jafar-esque issue, and so he deigned not to pry. Aladdin and Agrabah needed his help, and Sora would have obliged in a heartbeat.

The phone in his hand rang again as he advanced through the Cave’s first room, the stars at his back giving way to red, clay walls that looked suspiciously booby trapped.

Another text from Naminé.

_Do you know when you’ll be visiting the Gardens again?_

He didn’t.

_Not sure,_ he briefly replied. His heart leapt into his throat, and he ventured out on a limb. _Everything okay? You shouldn’t be awake._

It took about five minutes to navigate the Cave’s complex and strangely extravagant tunnel system. There were any number of lost treasures there, but he still hadn’t found a gauntlet. Braveheart slung over his shoulder, he advanced until he came to a massive, empty room. Crumbling pillars of red clay reached toward the dark vault over his head like the bloody fingers of old, dead gods. He wasn’t sure what ceiling they once supported, but it was gone, replaced by a magic skybox that held empty disappointment.

In the center of the room was a small, simply designed podium. It looked as if there might’ve once been something atop it, but as Riku approached, there was only dust and a faded, purple pillow. The velvet was marred by years of neglect, but there was a distinct imprint that ran across it that he guessed might’ve once resembled a forearm. Glancing down at his own hand, he considered that possibility an instant before his phone vibrated again.

_It’s not that late. Are you busy?_

_Not really._

Her next reply was instantaneous.

_So you’re not knee-deep in some deep, dark ruin right now?_

Riku scoffed.

_It’s not that dark._

He moved to put his phone back in his pocket, then elected to extend his point with a second message.

_There are torches. Why aren’t you asleep?_

Riku snapped a photo of the now empty pillow before thrusting his contact with the outside world back into the folds of his jacket. Aladdin was going to want to see some sort of proof that he found the right place, and, judging from the limited description he’d received (dark, pillary, and creepy were all the descriptors Aladdin knew to give), his artifact was gone. Whatever it was, it no longer belonged to the Cave of Wonders.

The world beneath his feet rumbled when he turned to exit. He stumbled left, braced himself with his keyblade, and watched as five streaks of black sand raced out from the entrance he came through. They circled the room and coagulated into one, writhing mass that wriggled and shook until it took form.

The creature now opposite him was a shadow unlike any he’d ever seen.

It looked a little like a man in size and shape, but the sand that comprised it was translucent. Its entire body was lithe, and the build reminded him a little of a sickly version of Aladdin’s. The facial features were hard to read, save for the violet eyes that dominated its face. He could see through it to the door behind it, but that offered him little comfort. Riku’s fingers gripped Braveheart’s hilt as the man-like shadow stepped forward, its footsteps but whispers against the clay floor.

Its voice was not familiar to him, and he immediately decided that it couldn’t have been any construct of Jafar’s. That man was too vain to create anything that wasn’t in his image. He was also, presumably, dead.

“And who might you be?” It whispered. “A vulture, perhaps? Or another peasant who thinks himself a king?”

Riku didn’t answer. Instead, his gaze lingered on the monster’s right hand, where licks of violet flame threatened to consume its shadowy body whole. They were barely regulated — Riku could tell that much. He knew unstable magic when he saw it. Whatever creature he now faced, it was just a shade, the remnants of a man that didn’t know who it now threatened.

When he didn’t immediately say anything, the apparition stepped to the left, its eyes fixed on Riku. The ground beneath his feet rumbled again, as if betraying the monster’s flaring temper. The shadows that held its form grew less stable.

“I should have known that rat would send someone to check up on me eventually. That Aladdin. Never could mind his own business. He condemns me to die and then, poof, a few Mamluks turn up and suddenly he’s so considerate…”

Riku really had no clue what the guy was talking about.

“I don’t know who you are or what a Mamluk is,” he said.

“Well, we have a question in common then,” the shade replied. “Who are you, boy? And what’s that neat little weapon of yours? It would take something more than steel to cut my children to pieces.”

“Your children?”

“Ah, you’re right — silly me. My peons? My servants? You’re going to have to forgive me. I haven’t given a good monologue in quite some time. Consider yourself lucky. A dead man, too, but a lucky one all the same.”

The shadow’s tone was so full of venom that Riku could taste it on his own tongue. It came across so thick that he could hardly miss it, even as something vibrated in his jacket. He glanced down, and the villain across from him laughed.

“Oh, you’re distracted. How precious. You’re going to have to pay more attention if you want to get out of here alive.”

He looked up.

A sphere made of black fire was already coming his way.

Riku smacked it to the side with Braveheart and then surged forward, key lifted high overhead. The shadow hovered back and dodged out of the way of a quick, heavy strike that carved a crater into the ground beneath their feet. Riku lifted his blade just in time to swing again before the monster fully left his range — but the blow sailed straight through the creature’s body, harmlessly bisecting it.

There was just enough time left over for him to frown before a bolt of lightning exploded from his foe’s right hand and caught him off guard. He grunted as the bolt struck him; thunder boomed and the sheer force flung him across the room. His back slammed into a pillar and he rolled upon hitting the ground. The pain burned every nerve, but he could still fight. Exhaling, he reached into his pocket to see what Naminé might’ve said to him.

_I couldn’t sleep._

“I told you,” the monster called, its voice distorted by rage and magic, “that you need to pay more attention!”

A hail of flame came flying his way. Riku be free Braveheart in his defense, still down on one knee. The sphere impacted the center of his keyblade’s shaft and he went skidding back, wreathed in dissipating embers that burned out into muted ash around the borders of his Keyblade. A few burned his jacket, leaving behind tiny, black holes that he’d need to patch later. None made contact with his skin, which still burned from the lightning strike he fell prey to earlier.

Physical attacks weren’t going to work. His Keyblade was magical, but clearly the monster before him didn’t play by the same rules that Heartless did. Judging by its affinity for magic, he was going to have to fight fire with fire.

The creature lifted its right hand again, but Riku beat it to the punch.

“Thunder!”

A strike of highly concentrated energy cracked over its head, ripping the stone beneath its feet to shreds. It scattered for just a moment, and then reformed in place, its image only a little shakier than before.

“Interesting,” it said. “A sorcerer, in league with Aladdin? I never thought I’d see the day. It would be criminal to waste all that talent… That spell would’ve reduced a mortal to cinders.”

Its hand shimmered gold. A vein of jet-black light ran through the bright, yellow flash that raced up its arm in response to some unheard call, and Riku felt a similar pulse of magical power in the space between them.

He slammed Braveheart into the floor and resisted admirably for all of ten seconds before the clay beneath him gave way, sending him ass-over-end toward the monstrous shadow that bid him forward.

Its hand solidified into a dark, earth-brown claw around his throat the minute he would’ve made contact with empty air. Riku grunted, the fingers of his right hand still gripping the blade in his hands. The shadow was only slightly taller than him, but it had enough leverage to lift him off of the ground. The Keyblade master’s free hand fell onto his foe’s wrist in defiance of the choke-hold he now found himself in.

“Tell me. Who trained you?”

The Keyblade didn’t do any damage. Regular magic didn’t work.

“You don’t want to know,” Riku hissed.

Sibillations of crackling, green flame burned down each of his fingers and sank into the shadow’s claw. It had just enough time to glance down, register what it saw, and glance back up to Riku before the entire chamber gave way to a flash of shimmering emerald light.


	2. A World So Bright

In the end, he escaped the Cave of Wonder with only a few new bandages along his arm. There were some burn marks over his neck, where the shadow touched him, and a few burn holes left in his jacket. He was a little heartier than he was as a kid, both blessed and burdened by the steel left behind by years of battle. That didn’t make Naminé worry over him any less when he appeared the next day, and he could see her eyes traveling every inch of him in search of some new wound while they shared a quiet vigil on the overlook that separated the bastion from the rest of the city.

Where there had once been a long, purple scar, there was now a sea of evergreen trees and a sky that pounded as blue as a bruise. Lake Ansem, not to be outdone, glittered beneath that same sky, its beauty peered only with the girl sitting next to him.

Riku caught himself staring an instant before she turned to look at him. Glad that she hadn’t been watching him the whole time, he regarded the view spread out before them instead.

“So why couldn’t you sleep?”

“I don’t feel very useful here,” she admitted, frankly and without protest.

“You’re a princess,” Riku replied. “You don’t really have to be.”

“Just because I don’t have to be doesn’t mean I don’t want to be.”

He didn’t have to look over at her to know that she was wrinkling her nose, like she often did when she was deep in thought. Kairi did the same thing, and he figured that was where Naminé got it from. Somehow, it was a more endearing feature on her than on his redheaded friend. Maybe it was because she did it more. He wasn’t sure there was a way to tell.

“I tried to learn a little magic,” she explained, “but it hasn’t been going very well. Merlin says that I have a lot of potential, but I can’t draw it out on my own. I’m not sure how to follow his instructions.”

Riku kicked at the stone beneath them, his boots scraping the wall. It made sense that she wasn’t learning much in Radiant Garden. He didn't see the world through the same lens she did. It was fine, beautiful, and bold, but still haughty and a little repressed.

“Merlin…”

“He taught Sora,” Naminé offered.

“I know.”

There was a silence that told Riku exactly what line she thought she might’ve crossed. He broke the quiet by providing her his opinion.

“I don’t think you’ll learn much from him.”

“He’s very talented.”

“That doesn’t make him a good match for you,” he explained. “You need to be on the same page. Merlin’s magic is frantic, and kinda wild. It’s a good match for someone like Sora, who doesn’t really plan things out.”

The way she hummed told him that she understood.

“I need to find someone like me, then,” she whispered.

That would be harder than she thought, but Riku didn’t tell her so. Yen Sid was retired now, and Kairi wasn’t exactly a master magician. Donald didn’t take students that weren’t also ducks, and Merlin clearly didn’t match her.

King Mickey was obviously out, and Ansem, though he knew a little magic, didn’t qualify as a magister. He was a scientist first and foremost, and so were his pupils. That left Aqua, of course, but she was still training Ventus. Taking on a second pupil might’ve been too much for her.

Riku wasn’t sure who he could suggest to her with all of that in mind. Magic was a difficult and almost lost art; he could count the number of people capable of it that weren’t either dead or evil on one hand.

She turned to him, expression grave. “Who taught you?”

Riku frowned, and chose his next words carefully.

“You wouldn’t get along with her.”

“Then perhaps you should teach me instead,” she suggested.

That was an idea, but not one he was sure he agreed with. Naminé was a wonderful woman — and she was one of the few people with time that he actively pursued. She was sweet, caring, and considerate. He had no doubt that she would be a quick study, and she was probably right that they had enough in common for him to teach her. The difficulty came in elsewhere, however.

She was a wonderful woman, but a woman of duty. She had her obligations to Radiant Garden, and he had his to the universe at large. Agrabah, for example, still needed him. Aladdin hadn’t yet tracked down that gauntlet, and the sorcerer in the Cave of Wonders… whatever phantom apparition he banished, it hadn’t been the real deal. For now, though, he didn’t have much else to go on there. The trail was cold.

“Maybe.”

“We get along fairly well,” she surmised. “Even if you do think I have a bed time.”

Riku smiled, but he didn’t laugh.

“What, like the princess doesn’t have a curfew?”

“Ansem doesn’t track my every move, you know,” she chided him. “He’s been a very gracious host. If you stuck around for a while, maybe…”

He wasn’t sure he wanted to know where that was going.

“Maybe you’d see a different side of him.”

Riku shrugged.

“Sticking around isn’t my forte.”

“Then maybe I should come with you? I’d like to see worlds other than this one, after all.”

“I’m not sure I’m the sort of teacher you’re looking for,” he admitted.

A silence fell between them, and in it, Naminé scooted a little closer to him. He could feel her warmth at his side, and that warmth spread through him when she rested her head on his shoulder. She wrapped her arms around his elbow and nestled in closer to him, and Riku was at once more conscious of her presence than he’d ever been.

She must not have known the boundary that she so effortlessly crossed, but for her… there was no objection. She was simply tangled up with him now, and that was something he would need to deal with.

“You might be right,” she said. “After all, you can’t be very good at magic. You must be a very shabby wizard if you can’t even fix your own jacket.”

He couldn’t help it — her jab made him laugh.

She glanced up at him from his shoulder, blue eyes latched onto his face like searchlights. The pines below disappeared as he met her gaze, replaced only by the warmth of her touch and the sea he saw in her. It reminded him of home, of sandy beaches and the smell of a salted sea. He inhaled sharply and looked away.

Whether or not she noticed his reaction, she didn’t say anything about it. Instead, she let the silence between them linger just a little bit. He wondered, absently, if she was the same way around Roxas. He knew that her fellow Nobody was close with her, that he had different ways of getting her to open up than Riku did.

And then, a moment later, he wondered why that thought dared cross his mind.

“Sure,” he finally decided. “I’ll need a place to stay for a few days.”

“We can prepare quarters for you. And a space for us to practice, if we’ll need it.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I know a place for that. Doing it in the castle would be too distracting. Too many people would want to see, and DiZ might be different now, but I think he’d still worry if he knew you were learning magic.”

“I didn’t say I hadn’t told him,” Naminé objected.

“Didn’t say you had, either.”

She nodded against his shoulder and he knew that he was right. He could feel her fingers as they crawled up his bicep, to where the holes in his jacket waited for her. For a second, he wondered if she could tell what caused them. Her training with Merlin may not have been long lived, but magical fire left behind a very distinct mark. It also wasn’t like Riku made a habit of running into mundane danger. Regular fire probably wouldn’t have burned through the fae enchantment that protected his clothes.

When he didn’t tell her, she asked. “How did you get these?”

He told her about how Aladdin asked Genie to come find Sora, and how the Genie stumbled upon Riku instead, flying around in his friend’s old ship. He explained to her how Aladdin needed to find an ancient gauntlet, one that he said housed unimaginable power, before it fell into the wrong hands.

He didn’t mention to her the shambling monstrosities that he encountered outside of the Cave of Wonders, but he did give her the footnotes on his battle with the shadow. There, he left out only the ending.

When he was done with all he had to say, she surveyed him in the same way that a lepidopterist might survey a particularly finicky butterfly. Her fingers curled around his arm as if folding back that butterfly’s wings, and he figured she was trying to find a solution to the problem of where the sorcerer could have disappeared to.

“I’m glad you’re alright,” she whispered. “You shouldn’t be messaging me in the middle of a battle.”

“You’re the one that sent me the message.”

“For you to read later, silly. You don’t have to read them immediately.”

Riku didn’t answer, so she continued. “Do you know where he might’ve went?”

“The sorcerer? No. He could be anywhere. Aladdin went quiet when I told him what happened. Clammed up.”

“He may know,” Naminé suggested.

“Why wouldn’t he tell me?”

“He probably didn’t want you to have to deal with his problems. He knows Sora. He doesn’t know you, not yet.”

That was fair enough.

“He’ll like you once he gets to know you, though,” she quietly asserted. “You’re very likeable.”

Riku snorted.

“Tell that to the sorcerer that tried blowing me to smithereens.”

“I will.”

She said it so sternly that he couldn’t help but to believe her.

* * *

Radiant Garden didn’t open to welcome him. Its streets were just as foreign to him on his first day as a temporary resident as they ever had been. Hemmed in by the massive, stone walls that defined the city’s edge, Riku kept to himself for as long as he could. He left the castle every so often in order to venture out into the markets or to attack the library for any hints on the sorcerer he encountered in Agrabah.

The shade he banished belonged to an accomplished sorcerer of some kind, presumably of some note. His name wasn’t going to be in any of Radiant Garden’s books, but Riku still hoped to find some deeper understanding of the man’s magic somewhere within the yellowed pages of the kingdom’s oldest tomes.

He found little of use, but Naminé’s company brought him a little reprieve.

She was bookish to a fault, and her influence led the two of them back to her chambers at the castle more often than not. He preferred her room to the stuffy library, if only because they could leave the balcony doors open for a nice, summery breeze.

“I’m not sure I know how to help,” she admitted one night, lit gold by the burn of the lamp over her head. Her legs were curled up beneath her in a large, violet armchair, her arms wrapped around the edges of a dusty red book. Riku stared at her over the edges of his own, his back to the headboard of her bed.

“Honestly, I’m not even sure what we’re looking for,” he replied. “Some of his magic was really easy to identify. Most of it wasn’t.”

“How do you mean?”

Riku realized he hadn’t explained that to her yet, and so he straightened, easing his head against the wooden frame behind him. Magic was a complex subject. Even if he agreed to teach it to her, he wasn’t sure his explanations were going to be very effective. He wasn’t a natural tutor by any means, even if she was a quick study.

The hard part wasn’t going to be the explanation, though. It was going to be helping her internalize that explanation for future use. She needed to understand the things he was doing and be able to replicate them.

“There are a lot of different spells out there, but some are very general. Anyone who can do magic, for example, can cast Fire. They might do it differently than you or me, but it’s a very basic spell that teaches you a lot of the fundamentals of magic. Some of his spells seemed pretty complex.”

“Fundamentals?”

“Things like how to control your spell after you cast it, how to regulate the potency of the effect, and how to focus on the effect you want.”

“I see,” she hummed.

“Magic is all about inspiration and determination,” Riku continued, resting an arm over his knee. “The weak-willed can’t do magic. You need to be able to visualize the effect you want and really believe in it. Sometimes that means getting creative, or focusing when you don’t think you can focus. It’s harder to cast a Fire spell when you’re in the middle of a snowstorm, for example, but that’s when you’re most likely to need it.”

Her eyebrows knitted together in response to that notion, and her finger curled against her chin. Riku watched her close the book on her lap and submerge herself in thought, his eyes stuck on her pursed lips — and then her long eyelashes, once he was too conscious of that. When he knew she understood, he continued.

“It’s easy enough to identify spells once you know the basics of magic, though. A lot of spells are going to be sorta cookie-cutter.”

“I suppose Fire is always going to look like flame, and Blizzard is always going to freeze things,” she replied, thoughtful still. “So crafting your own spell would be somewhat simple, then? You just have to imagine the effect?”

Riku exhaled sharply.

“Yes and no.”

“I’m going to need a little more than that,” she joked.

“Magic takes energy, and sometimes, it needs a secondary component. That’s not always the case — you don’t need water or an ice cube to cast Blizzard, but you’d need the energy inside of you to cast it. Using too much of that energy, your mana, will leave you drained.”

  
She hummed with satisfaction, leaning forward in her seat. He was glad to see her so excited to have grasped something. Learning was an activity he never got tired of, and it was good to share that with someone. “So that’s why people get exhausted if they cast too much magic.”

“Right.”

“And you mentioned another component? What did you mean by that?”

“A secondary source of energy,” Riku explained. “That source will vary from person to person. Roxas, for example, uses light magic. That requires an actual source of light from within; as far as I know, though, he’s the only one who can do that sort of thing.”

“Mm. I imagine darkness is more common, then?”

Riku nodded and she glanced back down at the book in her lap, ruminating on some mystery that he didn’t know. Maybe she was piecing together the parts of his past, looking back on the magic she knew him to have. Had his replica ever cast a spell in front of her? Did it have the same, dark tint that most of his spells did? He was no longer reliant on the darkness, but the memory of it burned in his veins with every spell he cast. It was hard not to call upon its power in times of need.

The darkness was dangerous. It promised you things you couldn’t keep and swore to you that you would be the only one capable of holding in its true power. That oath was never true, though, and the darkness would burn you long before you used it to its full potential. Riku was a graceless exception to that rule, burned only almost to the root instead of scorched to cinders.

In the end, she let the thought go — whatever it was — and the rest of the night passed in relative silence. He told her a little more of how magic worked, and showed her how to create fire in her hand. Quietly gleeful when she managed it herself, they made their plans to meet the night after for some more serious training in one of the tunnels beneath the city. It was the sort of scandalous thing that the people expected of him, but she didn’t seem to mind.

She didn’t notice the way they glared at him, either, for hoarding her time. Her attendants weren’t happy that Riku’s plans were throwing her schedule out of focus, and the citizens of the city at large were unsettled by the idea of their new princess running around with some punk in a burnt up jacket.

When Naminé showed up to their first training session in her iconic white, Riku decided it was time that jacket became hers.

He draped it over her shoulders and told her up front that she needed a disguise.

It took only one more midnight training session for her to show up wearing it, her new outfit completed by jet-black sunglasses and a pair of black shorts that barely reached her knees. She looked a little bit like a cartoon character pretending to be a super spy, and Riku nearly laughed her out of the ratway.

“I meant something more low profile,” he said.

“This is very low profile,” she insisted.

“Right. Totally.”

“Is that sarcasm?”

“No,” he wryly answered. “Not in the slightest. No way.”

She marched up to him from afar, peering at him with those long eyelashes of hers from behind her very inconspicuous and not at all out-of-place shades. She looked like a surfer about six-minutes out from her next wave.

“Hmm. I’m not sure I believe you.”

She was so serious all the time that seeing her playful side left him devastated. Getting to spend more time with her was honestly a treat. It’d been so long since he actually stood with someone, got the chance to laugh, and didn’t leave immediately after.

So Riku scoffed and put his hands on his hips like he hadn’t just sassed her into the next dimension. His arms were well toned from years of training, and in the light of the ratway, that definition cut the difference between them. Naminé was soft where he was hard, and even in his jacket she was smaller than most. Her petite frame was untested by the demands of combat, and she lacked the tell-tale signs of battle that ran up and down his neck, chest, and extremities.

That wasn’t a bad thing.

He liked that she was unburnt by her trials. The fear in him suggested that she carried her scars in other ways, and he tried to ignore that as she crept closer to him beneath the lights of the lights overhead. Gold caught fire in her hair, and for a second, he felt a strange, familiar urge to just wrap her up in him that he forced away.

“Right,” he dismissed. “Believe whatever you want. We should get to work.”

And so they got to work. Riku showed her a few spells that he thought complimentary for her: how to cure wounds, how to create paltry barriers. He explained to her the reason that most wizards use staffs and staves as focuses, the methodology behind curatives, and his own struggle in learning them. He wasn’t great at healing, not like Sora and Kairi were.

He was far better at casting offensive spells, but he was a strong enough all-rounder that he could still teach her what she needed to know.

For the most part, she was a quick study. She didn’t need to dwell long on advanced concepts, and she could improvise well enough to figure out spells that he hadn’t shown her. It took her only a day or two to learn how to strengthen her body with magic, which made her a lot more durable than she looked.

It didn’t take her long to pick up on the more complex pieces of magical theory that eluded him. Riku knew the general ideas better than he did the specifics; he hadn’t been taught too much, back when he’d been a learner. Mickey taught him a few things here and there, but most of his understanding had been granted under the threat of green fire.

Their shared nights in the ratway were interludes. During the day, he ventured out with Leon and Cloud, patrolling the woods around the city as its vigilant watchmen. Sometimes, on the slow days, they trained together. Neither warrior could quite take him, but the battles were always close and the banter a good distraction from the troubles that plagued his mind.

They persisted even as he watched Cloud and Leon face off for the third or fourth time, aware that their battle was going to last until sundown. If either of them came at him as fiercely as they did each other, he knew that they’d win. Somehow, though, it was as if they reserved the lion’s share of their strengths until the time came for them to square off together. They liked putting on a show, and most days, Riku liked watching.

On his thirtieth day in Radiant Garden, however, his mind was elsewhere. He leaned forward onto Braveheart’s pommel while silver clashed against steel meer feet away, each gargantuan collision marked by the clang of metal and a grunt or two from the determined men waging war for their amusement. Riku’s eyes watched them without really watching, his fingers drumming little beats into his Keyblade’s guard.

The closer Naminé grew to him, the harder it was to keep her out of his thoughts.

He checked his phone every time he got the chance, eager to hear from her when she found the time to drop him a line. The fact that they would be meeting up later in the night didn’t do much to quell that urge, either, because he looked forward to their time together more and more with each passing day.

She was incredibly easy to like, with a quiet demeanor that suited him and a pleasant attitude that left him feeling more and more confident with each passing day. Her attitude wasn’t the problem.

The problem was that he didn’t know what to do with their newfound proximity.

Riku knew that they were being pulled together toward the black hole that burned in his heart; their friendship was orbiting around it like a space station crashing toward a doomed planet, destined to burn on the way down. People that got close to him typically didn’t last long, scorned either by fate or the same, dark luck that followed him since the first time he caved in to grim impulse.

He didn’t want her to get hurt, but he didn’t want to leave her either. When he was around her, things felt easier than they did without her. Her presence was a blessing that carried him through darker days, and now that she had entered his life, it felt fruitless to imagine going forward without her even if she was the princess of a kingdom that he doubted she would ever leave for good.

The other problem he had to contend with was that he hadn’t heard from Aladdin in a while. It wasn’t like he had a gummi phone, but Riku left him with a method of contact — a piece of magical parchment that would convey any message he needed Riku to see. It wasn’t as convenient as Chip and Dale’s now ultra-popular invention, but it did the job in a pinch.

Still, the fact that Aladdin hadn’t reached out told him one of two things. Either the soon-to-be Prince of Agrabah no longer needed his help…

Or he was no longer capable of asking for it.

Riku didn’t have much time to dwell on that particular issue. Radiant Garden was a veritable treasure trove of lore regarding other worlds, but Ansem’s absence over the last ten years hadn’t been helpful. There was a gaping hole in his records that spanned the last ten years, a wound that left him with outdated maps and useless information that he wasn’t sure he could trust..

He didn’t realize how frustrated he was until Naminé crept up behind him in the library one night, her fingers easing into the tension that broke over his shoulders. She kneaded away weeks of worry in seconds, and then leaned forward so that her chin rested between his neck and his clavicle. Her arms draped themselves like streamers over his torso and her fingers played against her own wrists, brushing every so often against the fabric of his shirt.

“No luck?”

“None,” Riku grumbled. “There’s nothing here on what a Mamluk is, or who the sorcerer with the gauntlet might be. I wish Aladdin would’ve just told me.”

Naminé didn’t respond, so Riku kept going.

“There’s a place in Agrabah called the Land of The Black Sand, but it’s a dead kingdom. The only man living in it is Destane, a wizard. This book told me that he conquered the place himself, but it doesn’t say anything about how or what magic he used. It’s the only lead I have to go on, though.”

He inhaled, leaned back into her, and exhaled.

“Black sand, magic… a wizard capable of conquering an entire kingdom. It’s too much of a coincidence. I tried reaching out to Aladdin, but he hasn’t responded yet.”

“He might be busy,” Naminé suggested. “Being a Prince can’t be easy.”

Riku figured she would know, and deferred to her there with a shrug. His fingers surged upward, ran briefly through his hair, and then bridged the gap to her face. She stared down at him from above, eyes full of curiosity — and then disdain when he squished her cheeks a second later.

He laughed and she pulled away from him, carefully walking toward another shelf on the opposite side of Riku’s chosen table. He always picked the same one, right by the window. There, dim stars burned in the sky outside. Bruised clouds, hemmed in by the vault of glass that was the window and its sill, drifted on in silence. Part of him wondered if she knew why he always chose that spot, or if he knew how long he watched her stare out into the sky for.

When he finally looked away, she came back to him.

“It’s possible that he could be in danger,” she admitted. “What sorts of magic did this sorcerer know? You told me a few things. Black fire, teleportation… it seems as though he’s capable of projecting shadows. It’s all very dark, isn’t it?”

“It can’t just be darkness,” Riku figured.

“Why not?”

“It’s too strong for that. Too concentrated. Something would need to be amplifying his power, keeping the darkness in check so that he could focus it.”

“Perhaps he’s using a focus, then.”

Riku shook his head while Naminé took a seat on the table, her legs kicking out over the ledge like they had the last time the two of them shared the bastion together.

“You can’t use a focus with dark magic,” he explained. “It’s too unstable. The body can barely handle it as it is… and even then, the side effects are terrible. No matter how you try to use it, the darkness is going to exact a price from whatever it’s channeled through.”

He watched her knuckle rise to her lips, and a stray curl fall around her face. It took every ounce of restraint not to move it out of the way for her. That would’ve required standing up. It would’ve required more restraint, then, to avoid putting his lips to hers like bookends.

“Perhaps the gauntlet works as his focus. It wouldn’t be unheard of if someone found a way to break the rules like that. People generally can’t channel the light, either, but Keyblades exist. Maybe his gauntlet works that way too, or like that sword of yours.”

“Braveheart?”

“Souleater.”

She was right. Souleater held up to the darkness. Rather, it did until it became a Keyblade of its own caliber. Riku leaned forward, bracing his elbows against the table’s edge to consider what she said. It wouldn’t have been the first time someone found a way to game the system. The darkness didn’t like being manipulated, though. It would exact its price from the Black Sand Sorcerer eventually.

Perhaps it already had.

“He told you about the sword,” Riku realized, a step late.

“Not quite.”

He wasn’t sure what to say. Instead of saying anything, he watched her fingers fumble over each other, digit circling digit.

“I saw it in his memories,” she whispered.

Riku didn’t know most of what transpired in Castle Oblivion. He knew only that Naminé still bore the scars of it. None on her skin, but in the way she walked and carried herself, how she shrank from those who weren’t him. He knew that he was the only one she let touch her. That she was far quieter around others than she was him. Whatever bond she formed with his replica, it went deeper than any he knew.

That made theirs all the more complex. At once, it felt like he was picking up the pieces with her. Their time together was still their own, but her starting point left her so much further along. She already knew the things he liked, the magic he favored. She knew how he learned magic, if she knew where he got that sword. Riku’s fingers rose to his shoulderblade, and he ran them over the spots she’d been massaging minutes ago.

His heart thundered in his chest at the thought of what else she might’ve seen, his lungs but glaciers now that he knew.

Somehow, the realization that he was a replacement for a handsome, dead boy that looked just like him wasn’t a comforting one. Part of him always knew it, with her, but to have it thrown in his face so unexpectedly hurt. She hadn’t meant to, and he couldn’t blame her for it, but that knowledge didn’t allay the worries that now flecked him like shrapnel.

There wasn’t anger in him at the thought that she might’ve been using him that way. Instead, he was left to contend with a vacant sort of feeling. He felt like a passenger in his own body, unable to process the emotions he needed to take the wheel.

“Right,” he said. “It’s fine. I understand. You saw what you saw.”

It would’ve been too easy to scorn her. To walk away like an angry child, jealous that she knew him better than he knew her. She didn’t get to choose the scars she bore or under whose name she wore them. Still, that didn’t leave him with an understanding of what to say to her next. Her fingers dug into the sides of his jacket and she pulled it tighter around her. Even with the tension that now bristled between them, he was glad to see her wearing it.

It wasn’t like she could control her past, he reminded himself. It just happened to be that her past was on a collision course with his. More accurately, that they had already collided once, and were now careening dangerously close to each other for the second time.

The sound of the city bustling on outside kept the silence amicable company until she broke it, her voice low. He couldn't imagine how she felt.

“Are you mad?”

Riku shook his head.

“No.”

A beat. It was better to move onto the problems they still stood a chance at solving.

“You might be right. The guy we’re looking for is using something to channel the darkness. Whatever it is, it’s probably keeping him from turning into a Heartless,” he explained. “There should be a way to track it down.”

Riku rose to his feet and stepped by her to find the bookshelf on the table’s left side. A menagerie of facts, figures, and maps lurked within the pages of every book there, detailed accounts of Agrabah’s history. The last ten years would still be a dark spot, but they weren’t aimlessly searching for signs anymore.

“Magic needs a power source,” she repeated, taking inspiration from their lessons. “If the darkness you encountered was enough to overwhelm you, that source must be potent. Are there any places in Agrabah where there’s an abundance of darkness? For someone to harness, perhaps?”

“You’re asking if there are any super obviously evil places that a dark wizard might hide in?”

“I am.”

Riku paused, finger running down the side of a dusty, purple tome. Villains always had a lair, didn’t they? They were so vain and self-obsessed that it was practically a requirement to own one. Even Maleficent had Villain’s Vale, for a time. She had about six other equally foreboding castles, but those were less aptly named.

“Something with a menacing name, perhaps,” Naminé suggested, watching him work.

He turned the book over in his hand, examining its cover, treading over the spine with his index finger to spell out the hint he’d been treading over for the last several minutes.

“The Land of the Black Sand sound evil enough?”

* * *

Agrabah was a cavalcade of color; golden sands offset brilliant, glittering spires made of marble and stone that spread out like daggers across a cerulean skyline. On most days, you could catch the scent of grilled halloumi and fresh-baked falafel from the eateries to the West, hear the march of feet stomping through the plaza at the city’s entrance, and follow the trail of visitors deep into the city’s heart.

There, Agrabah came alive.

Displays of all kinds filled a massive, overflowing square, packed to the brim with performers and antiquities that no traveler could resist. Riku remembered his first visit, where an old man tried to sell him a necklace dedicated to lovers, meant to make a love last forever. Not two stalls down, someone pitched him a perfume that dared make him immortal. In hindsight, both gifts were as false as the teeth in the mouths of their peddlars. That didn’t make their potential less real.

Now, as Riku perched on the rooftop of a broken down building in the city’s center, he saw none of that old grandeur. The blue skies were gone, replaced by a burning tempest that pelted the spires of his memory with ash rain. Sand once gold was now black, scorched by the hand of an emissary whose name he didn’t yet know. Even the palace was gone, reduced to rubble and left to linger like a trophy with its belly split open.

Aladdin’s home was now a wasteland carcass picked clean.

“It’s desolate,” Riku breathed, fists clenching at his sides. “We’re too late.”

Naminé, beside him, didn’t respond. Her eyes clung to the ruin below them instead, searching for any sign of the world Riku described to her. It hadn’t been easy convincing Ansem to let her leave. He still didn’t know that his would-be daughter was learning magic, but Riku doubted that would have swayed his decision any.

The dangers of visiting another world were many, but Agrabah was supposed to be safe. Aladdin and Jasmine were, after all, formidable enough on their own. Genie’s power wasn’t to be forgotten either, and Riku hadn’t wasted a minute in testifying on that to Radiant Garden’s king.

They left in the hopes of helping Aladdin find the sorcerer that he and his friends were so obviously looking for. Only in hindsight did Riku see the signs that they couldn’t have handled the issue on their own. They hadn’t been willing to leave the city to search for the gauntlet on their own, afraid that its fate would come early. They reached out to a total outsider in lieu of taking that risk, and now it had come for them all the same.

With the taste of ash thick in his mouth, Riku led the way down a set of stairs into the city’s center. There were no bodies to be seen, but there was an abundance of rubble. The most disconcerting thing was the silence, amplified by the discomfort that still lingered between them from their near-argument the day prior.

They hadn’t decompressed it yet.

His feelings were still swirling up inside of him, too hard to grasp, much less talk about. The fear that she might leave him in the lurch wasn’t there. He knew that she was far too loyal a friend for that. Naminé didn’t fear the darkness he still fought to banish. Instead, she regarded it like he did: a part of his past that he no longer needed.

The difficulty came in her understanding of that past and how it affected his present. People who stuck around him didn’t tend to last long. They fell prey to the dark that he chased, lost their way, or vanished into the realm of sleep. Some, like Aladdin, suffered just for making contact with him. If he had reached out to the sweet, vigilant Kairi, would his kingdom have fallen?

Somehow, Riku doubted that.

He strolled confidently through the streets, eyes flickering back and forth between ash piles for some sign of the one who reduced the city to ruin. There were no footprints, but the signs of battle were everywhere. Scorch marks littered what walls remained and there were chunks blown out of the half-crumbled towers that the city’s guards were meant to occupy. Naminé commented every once in a while on the destruction, her soft voice a song that carried over the quiet night.

“Was this the castle?” She asked, the second its gates came into view.

“It was.”

Agrabah’s once bustling palace had been torn down, its great walls replaced by veneers of smoke that lingered like torn banners across a battlefield. There were swords buried in the soot every few feet, their curved blades a testament to its defenders. Riku stepped over one as he made his way toward where he knew the throne room to be, and knelt at the base of the still-white chair that once seated Aladdin’s father-in-law. It was the only thing untouched, but it was circled in a ring of heavy, black sand.

“We have to find who did this,” he breathed, scooping up a handful and letting it sift between his fingers.

“There’s only one place to look,” Naminé reminded him, her voice heavy.

The devastation couldn’t have been easy for her to see. Wrapped up in her white dress, she was a flower growing in the middle of an oil spill. She’d given him back his jacket for the time being, aware that he might need it. He was the one who intended to do most of the fighting, after all, and it was covered in a number of complex defensive enchantments, courtesy of the three good fairies.

Some of them didn’t play so well with him, but he understood that. Maleficent’s touch still lingered on him in every spell he cast. Absently, he wondered if Naminé knew that. Maybe it escaped her notice when she passed through his replica’s memories. Or maybe she knew everything, and they had only been playing at the intimacy he wanted to build with her. He wasn’t sure he could blame her if they had.

Letting the last of the black sand fall, Riku rose to his feet.


	3. Black Sand

The Land of the Black Sand was about a day’s journey south, far beyond the Cave of Wonders and deep into the desert’s heart. It was larger than Agrabah, its body just as desolate. The entire Kingdom was a skeleton, bones left behind by the desolation that claimed the golden city the world was named for. Together, they waded through shanty after shanty, passing by buildings devoid of life and love.

Its capital was no different.

They arrived in the dead of night to find the rocky city buried under a vault of black sky and a heavy, pregnant moon. Stars twinkled across smatterings of bright purple paint that bled more beautifully than any Riku had ever seen. It was a cruelly handsome place, he thought, and that cruelty only grew more apparent as he and Naminé advanced through its streets toward the palace that loomed high in the distance.

Over its head, burial clouds gathered like mourners at a funeral in the night sky, looking down with disdain on the two far travelers that brooked the city’s streets. He didn’t think about the source of them until Naminé reached out to take his hand with hers, eager to stick close by.

“Those cloud formations aren’t natural,” she revealed. “I can feel the magic in them, the darkness. It’s like you said.”

On their journey, Riku posited the theory that she could detect the darkness. Kairi could, and Naminé, as her Nobody, was bound to share a few of the same talents. Somehow, though, she was capable of taking that skill a step further — she could sense not only darkness, but magics of all kinds. She hadn’t learned to tell the different types apart, yet, but the flight to Agrabah did her good. She spent it reading every book she could, discovering as much as she could about the different sources there were for magic and the way that affected them.

She hadn’t found a way to shut down the Black Sand Sorcerer’s power, but he hoped that they could cross that bridge when they came to it. With any luck, it was as simple as taking away his focus: the gauntlet that Aladdin sent him for so many weeks ago.

Thunder broke in the sky at the thought, but Riku was unphased.

“Don’t worry. It’s just for show,” he said.

“I’m not worried. I’m here with you, aren’t I?”

She squeezed his hand tighter.

Despite his reluctance, he squeezed hers back, offering her a confident nod as the two of them began the steep climb toward the Black Palace. Unlike Agrabah’s crown jewel, it was a grim looking place. Its walls were made of marrless gray stone, its towers capped by obsidian. It glittered even in the dark, and from within, the glow of cold, black fire spilled into the sky. Everything about the castle screamed death and woe.

They found no resistance until they crossed the archway that led toward the palace’s main entryway. There, two decaying men in ancient rags stood vigil over the walkway. Behind them, a set of black gates that promised doom to those who passed. Riku came to a stop some ten feet away, and Naminé, behind him, steeled herself. Below, more of the capital city spread on for miles, surrounded by a sea of black sand that threatened to bury the rest of the world.

“They smell rancid,” she breathed, covering her nose and mouth with her free hand. “Have you fought them before?”

Riku’s fingers left hers, a warning ready in his throat. “Stay back, Naminé.”

“I can help.”

“I know you can,” he whispered. “But that doesn’t mean you need to. Save your energy instead. Let me handle these goons.”

Riku lifted his right hand to conjure a sea of pinpricks that burned silver in the cool night air. His fingertips flexed back and Braveheart roared to life in his hand, its long silver blade swimming with light. Naminé, behind him, braced herself for the battle to come. Guarding herself with her forearms over her chest, she watched Riku march forward to meet their opposition without fear.

The Mamluks drew their scimitars from the loops in their belts.

Silver flashed in the moonlight and carved diagonally through the left Mamluk with one, clean stroke. The second swung hard for Riku’s exposed side, but the Keyblade Master didn’t bat an eye before parrying the stike with one of his own. It was dead before it could recover, slashed in two by another, forceful blow. Like the monsters he defeated outside of the Cave of Wonders, they dissolved into pitiless black sand.

“These things were waiting for me the last time I ran into the sorcerer we’re looking for,” he confirmed. “So we’re on the right track.”

Riku advanced through the palace gate, followed by Naminé, who took care to avoid the black sand on the ground that he so boldly stepped through. They came into what looked like a once-grand entrance hall, lined by pillars made of aged, gray stone. From the books on Agrabah’s past, Riku knew she expected something dark. The palace she now found herself in fit that bill — plucked from the pages of a grim fairy tale, its innards were as macabre as the dead land that surrounded it.

What they found were two more Mamluks, their unseeing eyes fixated on the next doorway. Riku cut them down with a blow each, dispersing them into the same black sand as the others at the outer side of the gate.

“Whatever these creatures are, they aren’t Heartless,” she whispered, sticking near to him as he deliberated upon which way to go. The castle layout was unfamiliar to her; she had no way to tell which way to go.

“They were alive, once,” Riku answered, gripping his key tight in hand. “At least, that’s my guess. My Keyblade doesn’t like hitting them. It’s not setting their hearts free. Whoever did this to them still owns their souls.”

“You can tell that?”

“I think so. It’s an educated guess.”

Naminé nodded.  
  
Thoughtful, he turned to her. “Do you think you could read their memories?”

“Hm?”

“If I captured one without splitting it in half,” he said. “Do you think you could get an idea of where we need to go from its memories?”

“I’m not sure,” she admitted.

The entrance hall they now occupied served as an intersection. Riku could see two doors each to his left and right. There were bound to be Mamluks no matter which way they went. On the far side of the room was another, massive gate. Bordered by two, blocky stairways, he knew where it led well enough that he didn’t need to ask what lay beyond it.

Naminé didn’t need to either, though she did peer at it over his shoulder for a long moment before explaining her uncertainty.

“I’ve always been able to read memories that were related to Sora. I’m not sure how thoroughly I can use my powers on other things — or other people. Especially when they aren’t alive to begin with.”

“We need to find Aladdin. Using your powers might be the only way to do that.”

“Aladdin? So he’s not…?”

“No,” Riku interjected. “There were signs of a fight, but something tells me that he’s still alive here, somewhere. The city floor was covered in black sand, remember? Mamluks leave that behind. Not people.”

When she nodded, he took that as a sign to continue.

“Someone was fighting up until the very end. The only thing untouched was the throne in the Sultan’s palace. The sorcerer probably came to take Agrabah, and when Aladdin told him no…”

“There was a battle,” she agreed.

“Most bad guys, like this sorcerer, have a reason for what they do. It’s not always a good one, but they always feel justified for it. He came for something specific. Vengeance, power, land… whatever it was, he wanted it to spite Aladdin.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“That’s how they work. Darkness festers in the heart, it makes you fixate on the ways you’ve been wronged. Just winning isn’t enough. You’ve got to destroy your opponent completely to feel any satisfaction. It’s the pursuit of that feeling that makes you so vulnerable.”

Naminé went silent, her eyes fixed on Riku’s face.

“That darkness isn’t a part of you anymore,” she said.

“I know.”

“So you think Aladdin is in this palace somewhere?”

“I do,” he concluded. “Maybe in the dungeons. If we can rescue him and his genie, we can undo whatever this guy did to Agrabah.”

It didn’t take them long to find a stray Mamluk roaming the halls. After cutting through the door to their immediate left, they happened upon one with its back turned in the middle of a lengthy hallway. Together, they slid into place behind a pillar.

“Get it to come over here,” Riku whispered. “I’ll take care of it.”

Riku did not take care of it.

Instead, snuck around the pillar and smacked it upside the back of the head with the flatside of his Keyblade when Naminé lured it over to her with a sharp whistle. It fell forward with a hearty groan and Riku kicked its sword out of its hands; desperate for survival, it swiped at him with its claw-like hands, only to catch a boot to the face for its efforts. It may not have been alive, but after that, it wasn’t exactly conscious either.

Naminé knelt at its side and braced both hands at its temples, unsure of what she might see. Riku watched her eyes flash white, followed by the Mamluk’s shortly after. When she came back to, the Mamluk rose with her, its eyes still backlit by her power. Riku let it stand, and even offered it back its scimitar when it groaned.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t surprised. “It’s with us now?”

“I think so,” she explained. “I altered its memories. It thinks it serves us. So long as we don’t run into its master, it’ll do as I say.”

Riku didn’t object to that.

“Alright. Did you find what we were looking for?”

“Aladdin and Jasmine are in the dungeons. There’s a stairway that leads down into the rock holding this place up. If we follow it down, we’ll be able to rescue them.”

“Makes sense. Be careful.”

“You’re coming with me, aren’t you?”

Riku shook his head.

“Someone has to distract Destane,” he said. “The sorcerer knows we’re here, remember? If someone doesn’t keep him busy, he’ll come for us eventually. Right now, he’s probably under the impression that we’re here for revenge. He doesn’t know we’re here for Aladdin.”

Naminé reached for him, lily-like fingers resting gently on his forearm. They climbed slowly up his bicep, then crossed the borders of his jacket to find the center of his chest. He didn’t know when she crept so close to him, or how he let her do it.

What he didn’t miss was the way she nestled into him, resting her head against his chin. Nor did he miss the feeling that resounded through him in response, that bid him to wrap his arms around her in turn.

“Be careful,” she repeated to him.

“That’s supposed to be my line,” he replied, redder than he’d ever been.

She smelled like vanilla and the sea, and her warmth so prevalent that it erased the chill of the palace. It was like holding her took the world out from under his feet, and in an instant, he forgot why he dared keep her at arm’s length in the first place.

“I will be,” he affirmed. “Find Aladdin. If you run into trouble, you know how to handle yourself. Right?”

“Right,” she breathed, lifting her eyes to his face.

The air caught in his lungs looking down at her and the thought that he might ever take another breath again was erased.

“Don’t get hurt,” she told him.

“I’m probably going to get hurt.”

“Don’t get hurt that badly.”

“No promises.”

She broke their hug with a frustrated smile tugging at the corners of her lips like tent poles. Her fingers pulled away from his arm one by one, leaves off a tree.

“Incorrigible. What would Kairi do if she heard you say that?”

“She’d probably give me another bruise to worry about,” he decided.

“That’s not very helpful of her.”

“There’s a reason I like you better.”

The Mamluk groaned, apparently weary of their bonding.

“Be safe,” he told her. “Take things slow. I’ll buy you plenty of time.”

She stared up at him and for a minute, time ground to a halt. He memorized the flecks of worry in her eyes, and the way that the black flames in each torch sconce lit her face. He brushed a strand of hair away from her cheek, and she followed that motion with her hand, traced the borders of his fingers, and then let herself fall away from him. Together, she and her Mamluk ran (shambled) down the hallway, ducked left, then cut into a corridor out of sight.

The march back to the throne room wasn’t a long one. He passed through the way they came like a phantom and strode confidently toward the gate that inevitably led to the throne room. The double doors swung open for him, revealing a long walkway carved out of ash colored stone. Riku followed it down, his eyes narrowed and fixed upon the slim figure that waited for him. Around its shoulders, a long, unfamiliar creature stretched out like a scarf.

Twenty stone pillars separated the doorway from the throne, each manned by a Mamluk. Their sabers were sheathed, for the time being, but their eyes followed him toward the throne, only to settle forward once again as he reached his place at the base of the steps that led directly to it.

“Destane,” he said, lowering his key so that its tip touched the stonework beneath his feet.

“No,” the sorcerer yawned. “I’m afraid not. Long dead, you see.”

The man rose to his feet. His black robes were flowing and lined with the same, starry purple that lined the sky outside. A dark, mud-colored gauntlet covered his left hand, and Riku’s eyes caught on it before they flickered back to the man’s face. He looked like Aladdin, albeit a bit younger. Soot-black curls rolled around his cheeks like paint, lining his pale face and sharp nose. He was cruelly handsome, in the same way that vipers were.

Riku didn’t need Naminé to feel the darkness rolling free in the man’s heart. He could see it behind his eyes, lurking there like poison on a blade. Theatrically, the stranger took one step down, and the eel-like monster on his shoulders hissed.

“You’re the boy from the Cave of Wonders.”

“Sharp eye,” Riku replied.

“I was wondering when you’d come. Aladdin insisted you would.”

The wizard and his eel both looked amused by this, but Riku said nothing. Villains were apt to monologue whenever they got the chance, and he wasn’t going to take time away from Naminé by interrupting him.

“Did you know that he swore he’d stop me, up until the moment I gagged him? He always was a talker.”

“I don’t have that problem.”

“I can see that,” the man said. “Those muscles of yours, the scars, that body, no… you’re certainly no wordsmith. A man of action is what you are. That’s why you’ve come, isn’t it? For some action?”

Riku didn’t respond.

“It doesn’t matter. My name is Mozenrath. You never gave me yours.”

“Riku.”

“Well, Riku,” Mozenrath replied, his voice dry, his eyes narrowed. “The least you owe me is an answer. Have you come to stop me? Save the day? Set things right again with a little of that old, heroic hutzpah?”

Thunder boomed in the skies over the castle, shaking its foundations. In the silence between them, rain pelted the roof, barely audible through the dense stone. Riku’s grip on Braveheart tightened. He was all too aware that things were about to go terribly wrong.

“Aladdin should have known I’d return,” Mozenrath said. “He always was such a pitiable mook.”

“And?”

“It’s his fault, really. That buffoon took what was mine. And now, I have taken what was his.”

“You think you’re justified? In reducing an entire country to rubble?”

Mozenrath waved his exposed hand in front of his face, dismissing the thought.

“No,” he laughed. “I’m not justified in that. I did that for the fun of it. I’m justified in what I’m going to do next.”

Tendrils of dark power gathered around the gauntlet over his left hand as he clenched his fist. Riku watched the power swirl, coagulate, and disperse again when Mozenrath relaxed his grip. He was testing boundaries, eager to see just how much fear he could draw free. Unfortunately for him, there was no fear in Riku. Not of the dark, or the power that lurked behind its unfulfillable oaths.

Vengeance was a fire, one that burned a man to the root. Once it burnt him whole, only ash remained, incapable of burning anything else ever again. If Mozenrath let himself fall prey to his perceived purpose, he, too, would become ash. The only question was how long he had left to burn.

“That gauntlet of yours,” Riku cut in. “It’s not going to last forever. It’ll break one day.”

Mozenrath looked bemused at best.

“Oh? An expert on magical artifacts, are you?”

“I’ve seen enough of the darkness to know how your story ends.”

“Well, well, aren’t you a rash one,” Mozenrath grinned, flashing his teeth. “Don’t you know, Riku? It’s all about the journey. And you look like you’ve had quite the long one. You and your little friend.”

Riku’s knuckles whitened beneath his gloves.

“Oh, what was her pretty little name again? Naminé?”

Mozenrath laughed and stepped by Agrabah’s makeshift champion, fanning his arms out wide as if to gesture grandly to his audience of Mamluks. He was trying to get a rise out, force a mistake. Riku wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

“She is quite beautiful you know. It’s going to be hard on her, losing you like this.”

He glanced down at the fingers of his gauntlet, curled them, and summoned another pulse of dark power to his grip. Wind howled against the castle walls outside.

“Don’t worry. I’ll make sure to take good care of her for you. Maybe she’ll even say my name as fawningly as she does yours—”

Riku was about half a second from swinging when a wail of wind broke through the wall behind him, pursued by a galloping, purple jackal that wrapped itself up around Mozenrath like a coat. Its body wavered, shifted, and then grew. Visible air surged around the beast’s ankles, tearing away at the stone beneath its feet. Riku shielded his face, blasted by a buffer of wind that poured from the jackal’s body.

Behind him, the storm poured in through the new hole in the palace wall. Thunder rumbled in the heavens and rain pelted the floor, casting the steps in a steady stream that swarmed around Riku’s boots. Mozenrath grinned, and the cage of light around his wrist collapsed. His canines flashed over his lips, glinting in the cool glow of his black torches.

“But I’d rather hear her scream it.”

Riku lashed out with Braveheart, swinging hard for Mozenrath’s head. The wizard ducked low and the wolf behind him surged forward, catching Riku’s keyblade in his teeth in an attempt to rip into the keybearer’s shoulder. Together, man and wolf battled backward across the floor for supremacy until Riku came skidding to the ledge created by the beast’s entrance. The monster’s teeth flashed, rattling the key in his grip, but Riku held firm.

He ripped his keyblade free and brought it up high over his head while the wolf recovered, slammed it down hard on the beast’s spine, and leapt halfway over its back before a bolt of concentrated thunder came crackling toward him from Mozenrath’s outstretched hand.

He grunted and hefted Braveheart in his defense—

Only to be swallowed by the same peal of thunder that blasted him free of the hole in the wall. Wind rushed up to greet him as he went careening through the air; it wailed, howled, and screamed as he fell, pursued by Mozenrath’s wolf and a slew of debris doomed to pelt the world below.

* * *

Naminé paused on the stairway as a deafening boom shook the walls around her, knocking loose juts of stone and shards of rock that crumbled against the steps. The Mamluk bumbling behind her — a once proud warrior named Nigil — didn’t seem as phased. It continued on its descent toward the dungeons with a deaf impunity to the chaos unfolding outside of the palace’s walls.

She felt a flash of worry for the boy she left behind, and her fingers curled against her palms as she quickened her pace. The faster she found Aladdin, Jasmine, and the Genie, the faster she could get back to Riku. He was one of the most formidable fighters in the universe, but that didn’t make him immortal. She’d already lost one friend to a dark fate, determined to protect her until the end.

She didn’t want to lose another.

Beyond her irrational worries was the understanding that their adversary was cunning and powerful. He’d killed Nigil and the rest of his undead army in the span of a single night, warped the Land of Black Sand into a nightmarish wasteland, and killed the once-proud Sorcerer that used to rule the lands. Destane was somewhat evil, prideful, and cruel… but he was nothing compared to Mozenrath, whose churlish impetuity threatened everything around him.

The memories of his reign assailed her piecemeal as she kept her hand on Nigil’s shoulder, making sure that she, too, knew the path to Aladdin’s cell in the event that he disintegrated into black sand.

Destane hadn’t been kind to Mozenrath. Useful, perhaps, in the sense that he offered Mozenrath his knowledge. In the end, however, that useful tutelage had only been a ploy. He needed the boy’s body to power the grisly, brown gauntlet on his arm and his teachings were bait on the end of a hook. Found in Destane’s youth, the gauntlet offered him power at a steep price, and if he didn’t scarper himself into a new body, it would have consumed him.

When Mozenrath discovered the truth, there was a mighty battle. It was decided by a razor thin margin, but Mozenrath defeated his master, claimed the gauntlet for his own, and took on its morbid power.

In return, he also inherited its curse.

The memories grew harder to decipher after that. He crushed the brief uprising that tried to depose him on the night of his rise, and he crushed every soul that dared object to him after. When the tide became too much to bear, he scorched it all and traded black sand for soot.

Nigil remembered raising his blade to Mozenrath, when things were pushed beyond the brink. He did not remember dying, but the memories of what came after were imprinted in him like ink on a page. He could not comprehend them or decipher what he heard in memory, but she could.

“We’re almost there,” she whispered to him. He couldn’t understand her, but her voice did seem to comfort him, in some, strange way. He lumbered easier when he heard it.

When they came to the bottom of the stair, a patrol of about eight Mamluks were there to greet them. Naminé gasped and they turned toward her in unison, their pale eyes attracted to the sound of her voice and the scent of the living.

Nigil groaned something to them, and one of them groaned back.

She briefly tapped his shoulder and played the memory back in her mind—

 _Do not attack,_ he said.

 _We will attack. Sorry, not sorry,_ his comrades replied.

She opened her eyes to see that the battle had already started. One of the Mamluks charged Nigil, only to be put down by a clumsy slash that caught it in the neck. It fell and two more stepped up, eager to take its place. Naminé lifted her hand in Nigil’s defense, leveling her palm at the one on the left.

It didn’t blink, but it did burn when a bolt of fire slammed into its chest. It let out a monstrous roar and fell back, clawing at the flames until the second it turned into heavy, black sand.

In the meanwhile, Nigil dealt with another one of his comrades; steel clanged against steel as her champion tried admirably to defend her, but it seemed to be a losing battle. He wasn’t as large as the nearly two meter tall monstrosity that bore down on him, and his body not quite as sturdy.

Naminé stepped back and lifted her right hand, calling down a pillar of light that dissipated into a sea of little, sparkling plates. They caught a death-blow the instant before it could slam down on Nigil’s head, rebuffing it completely. The stunned Mamluk stumbled backward, eyes agape, and then fell prey to the backlash of his own strike as it ripped him apart.

Nigil groaned something that Naminé took as a thank-you and moved on.

There were still five of them remaining against their two, but she felt confident about their odds. She kept that in mind when an ambitious Mamluk came surging by Nigil to strike at her, its blade only narrowly missing her head when she ducked left.

Steel clattered over stone and she skittered around the monster, lifting both hands and pressing them to its chest. Its eyes flashed white, the light reflected in hers, and then it turned to join Nigil in his fight. Together, Nigil and Ori battled against their brethren, who groaned in objection as they were ripped to pieces by a combination of sheer surprise and magical fire.

With the battle concluded, she gathered her companions to stand with her at the base of the stairs. Other than a little bit of bad breath, neither looked too much worse for wear. Ori had taken a blow or two, but those came during his actual lifetime, and she figured she couldn’t do anything about them. Nigil’s arm was broken, but that was a quick enough fix, considering he couldn’t actually feel the pain.

At first, she tried to set the limb back in place.

That just broke it more, and she winced when the poor Mamluk groaned.

“Sorry,” she whispered.

Setting it didn’t work, so she tried to heal it with a quick spell—

Nigil screamed out in horrible pain the second that her healing magic made contact with his graying skin, roaring in obvious frustration.

“Sorry!”


	4. The Jackal

Sirocco the Jackal tore through the alleys of the Black Capital like a blight, his shoulders ripping through clay and stone in order to pursue Riku on his retreat over the rooftops. Building after building collapsed in his wake, his jaws snarling and snapping as he closed the gap between them. Mozenrath followed not far behind, marching calmly through the destruction wrought by his monster while his pet eel surveyed the battlefield from its perch in the sky.

Riku leapt from the ledge of an already dilapidated rooftop and came rolling to a halt in the street on one knee, Braveheart ready. Sirocco came blasting free of the building opposite him, teeth flashing like jagged, yellow quartz in the moonlight. He bounded forward with a howl and Riku rushed in to meet him. The jackal lashed out with a fierce bite that ripped through empty air when Riku vanished into a hail of purple sparks.

The wolf-like monstrosity whirled around as it caught Riku’s scent again, turning to catch him only a half-step too late. Braveheart ripped into its flank and Sirocco yowled, dissipating into a blast of wind that buffeted the keybearer’s face and chest. He brought an arm up in his defense as the beast blew by him again, emerging on his rear side with a roar that Riku answered with a heavy, overhead slash.

Sirocco dodged out of the way this time, hopping left and lashing out with a wicked bite that would’ve disintegrated stone. Riku caught the would-be deathblow with Braveheart’s blade and a quick slash, forced to block with a rear-grip guard that pressed both his blade and the monster’s dripping maw to his elbow. He could feel the creature’s zephyrous teeth, hovering just over his flesh, kept at bay only by the strength of his forearms and the light in his heart.

Any mortal weapon would’ve already been shredded.

Even Braveheart was starting to show some wear and tear from the monster’s bestial persistence. Whatever it was made of, it wasn’t mortal or mundane.

“You’re realizing it too slow,” Mozenrath chided, stepping free of the hole that Sirocco emerged from hardly a moment prior. “Did you have understand even an inkling of who it is that you’re up against when you waltzed into my castle?”

“I’m starting to think that it’s a very talkative pet owner,” Riku growled, his arm straining to keep Sirocco at bay. “And his underfed mutt.”

Riku cocked his free hand back, conjuring a wreath of glittering, white sparks that burned in the air down his wrist. They caught and conflagrated over his arm, traced their way around his shoulders, and exploded across Braveheart’s blade to blast Sirocco away with a peal of deafening thunder. Kickback rocked his arm and he went skidding back across the dirty street, but that was nothing compared to the way Sirocco went flying (ass over end) into the already-shattered wall beside Mozenrath.

He regarded his downed wolf with little pity, shrugging his shoulders while it struggled to stand. His gauntlet hand sank, graced the beast’s shoulders, and sent a current of magical energy rippling through the beast’s body. It then rose, a macabre weed over its own headstone, and its eyes glittered red in the night.

“You think so lowly of me, Riku. It’s shameful.”

“Give me a reason to think better of you, and I will.”

Riku straightened, his line in the sand drawn on the street corner. Overhead, Mozenrath’s eel circled, trailed by debris from the castle overhead and ready to cast its first stone. He wasn’t sure that the sorcerer could really use his pet as a focus, but there was a reason that the little, fanged beast wasn’t attacking with Sirocco. It must have held some sort of twisted significance, even if it hadn’t yet been made useful.

Mozenrath laughed, low and cold as his hand roamed his monstrosity’s back. He touched it like he might’ve touched a real dog, once, and Riku couldn’t shake the feeling that he was playing at mortality with every action he took. He was a ruler of none in a Kingdom that didn’t breathe, playing king and conqueror both. He was a despot over the dead, who kept them penned in like little puppets on a macabre stage of black sand.

“You want me to, what, justify myself? To explain my crimes and repent for my wrongdoings, and give you back your paltry, peasant friend?”

Riku didn’t answer with words. Instead, his eyes burned holes through Mozenrath. They were beyond the point of justification. Regardless of how redeemable he may or may not have been, there was no denying the death and decay he wrought in his wake. He was no sultan, just a slave to his hate, and his sins would bring him to bear like shackles around the wrists of the damned.

“You want me to repent?”

Another, dangerous laugh tumbled free of the sorcerer’s lips as he ran his hand down Sirocco’s back. Lancets of lightning curled around his fingertips, raced up the length of his arm, and faded in the air over his shoulder. Inch by inch, the wind trailing off of Sirocco like poison filtered toward Mozenrath until it swallowed him hole. Burning in the night, an armor made of pure, unfettered power forged itself around his body.

Like steel, it glimmered in the moonlight, backlit by the windy power howling inside of the sorcerer’s heart. His cape billowed behind him, the only remnant of his cloak. Sirocco’s crimson eyes glimmered across his newly formed breastplate, amplifying his owner’s already potent power. Now a foot taller, bolstered by the energy of a being Riku still didn’t understand the potential of, Mozenrath glared down at his foe, his heart’s darkness his own high.

“You’re going to die disappointed.”

Mozenrath lifted his left hand and a ball of crackling, black fire caught life at the end of his fingertips. It shivered through the air and Riku stepped around it, not batting an eye as it demolished the storefront on the other side of the street. He closed the gap with a quick slice that the wizard caught with his gauntleted hand, and for a moment steel struggled against leather.

Riku braced his free hand on his weapon’s grip and pushed harder, but Mozenrath merely closed his fingers around the blade’s tip.

A moment later, black lightning surged through Braveheart and sent Riku flying backward through the air like a ragdoll. He tumbled over dirt and through debris until a wall stopped him. He was up on his feet in a heartbeat, but Mozenrath hardly afforded him the time to breathe before another blast of fire came flying toward him. Riku lifted his key and it exploded against his guard, sending him skittering through the stonework facade he collided with hardly a moment prior.

His boots sliding across the floor kicked up clouds of dirt and dust that filled the room around him, and from within that cloud came a sea of the undead. Six Mamluks rose from the dirt, their scimitars dark and hard to see in the semi-light.

He took the three on his left first.

One struck at him as he surged inward, but he weaved out of the way to catch its face with his gloved hand. It groaned in rebellion as he slammed it hard into the wall, grunted, and destroyed it with a surge of tightly controlled lightning.

Another lashed out while he had his back turned, but it didn’t take him long to slide left and strike back, cutting the poor thing in two with a decisive strike from Braveheart. Even tattered by Sirocco’s power, it was still sharp enough to turn his foes into black sand. He proved that again with two more quick strikes that reduced a third, shambling zombie to ash.

Mozenrath stepped into the room through its breach hole while Riku was in the middle of decimating a fourth monstrosity, Keyblade whistling until it slammed hard into the creature’s neck, and watched without emotion as Riku brought it down on a fifth’s scimitar.

It resisted.

Until his boot swept its legs out from under it and he brought the blunted tip of his key down on its diaphragm. He kicked the black sand away without a word and turned, ready to destroy his sixth adversary in as many seconds.

The Mamluk took one step back.

Mozenrath lifted his hand.

And five undead warriors rose anew from their ashes, revived by their master’s macabre power. Riku, now surrounded once again, said nothing. Their wounds were gone, and they looked as if he’d never touched them in the first place. He wondered, briefly, if Naminé was dealing with the same issue.

No, he thought. He’s focused on me.

“All that effort,” Mozenrath yawned. “You don’t have to die here, you know. You could join me, stand at my side.”

“As one of your Mamluks?”

“Something more merciful. Submit yourself to me and there will be no worry of death. I’d even spare your pretty little friend by way of thanks. A merciful offer, isn’t it?”

Riku’s gaze narrowed. His grip on Braveheart tightened as he drew it over his chest, letting one hand fall away and bracing the other against its blade. Light leaked free of every silvered cut along its shaft, bled from its dimples, and forged the weapon anew. At his ankles, a wreath of billowing, black darkness crept like smoke over the floor around him. Mozenrath didn’t so much as blink in response, his half-lidded eyes fixed on his adversary’s face.

“You’re right,” Riku admitted. “I’ve paid my price already. I’m not interested in paying another, and I won’t make the same mistake twice. That power of yours, it’s going to consume you, Mozenrath. If you don’t let it go, if you don’t bring it to an end here, you’ll become a slave to it.”

“I am no one’s slave,” the wizard hissed.

“Then prove it.”

“And what, free your friend? Return Agrabah to the shining jewel it once was? I have no use for nostalgia, no need for things that aren’t mine.”

“The darkness isn’t something you can have. It’s not a toy. You don’t own it. It owns you until the day it swallows you whole, heart-first.”

The sorcerer didn’t move.

“That’s what you think.”

Riku frowned. The Mamluks around him were frozen, awaiting their master’s order. They would not attack unless he willed it, but Riku knew that words wouldn’t stall him forever. There was only so long that he’d monologue before he grew tired of their game.

“It’s what I know. Trust me. End this now. Let Aladdin go free, bring Agrabah back. You don’t have to live a life of hate. Not anymore.”

He extended his free hand, the light leaking off of his fingertips like rays of god trying to reach the sea floor. Mozenrath regarded them with care and cold concern, much in the same way that a housecat might a poor treat.

“You’re naive,” Mozenrath whispered. His fingers clenched, and the gauntlet over his hand surged with vicious power. “And soon, you’ll be dead.”

The Mamluks dove in, blades flashing.

Then the cloud of darkness under Riku’s feet crackled, then caught fire to produce an explosion that reduced the building around them to desolate wreckage. The roof came down before the walls folded, and then scattered into the sky from the sheer force of the blastwave. Even Mozenrath stumbled back, caught off guard by the power and the potency of Riku’s attack. His windy armor shielded him from a majority of the damage, but there was no mistaking the black mark that now scorched the left side of his face like a scar.

The Keyblade Master strolled confidently out of the debris in pursuit of his quarry, eyes flecked with light and grit both. He lashed out with Braveheart, only to be rebuffed by a glittering, black saber that Mozenrath summoned in the blink of an eye. Black sand trickled from Mozenrath’s curved blade as he pushed Riku’s blow back and returned the favor with a slash of his own.

Riku parried, stepped in, and lowered his shoulder against the wizard’s chest — wind burned his face and nearly drove him back until he let out a pained cry, reinforcing his shoulder charge with a burst of thunder that blasted his foe backward across the roadway.

Mozenrath staggered and lifted his right hand.

“Stay back!”

From on high, a bolt of lightning came racing down. Riku smacked it before it could make impact, dispersing the brunt of it with his keyblade — then caught sight of a blade flashing in out of his periphery an instant later. He gasped and stepped back, but it left a long, black cut along the side of his cheek that mirrored the pockmark across Mozenrath’s. His gloved fingers rose to touch the wound and pulled away, but he had no time to examine the extent of the damage before their battle resumed.

Blow after blow, they fought through the streets with an animal urgency. Mozenrath planted a boot on Riku’s chest that sent him tumbling into another street, but before he could close the gap his foe came barreling out of the rubble, keyblade wreathed in a black power to match his own.

“It’s over!”

Riku swung hard for the fences and Mozenrath just barely blocked the strike, only to be flung back toward the cliffside they came from anyway. His eyes widened as Riku gave chase, leaping through the air with a ray of dark neon power trailing behind him. He brought Braveheart down with both hands before Mozenrath could land, sending him crashing into the rocky street to produce a crater the size of a small car.

The wizard rolled back before Riku could drive his keyblade deep into his chest, his body magically vanishing across the hole in the earth like a phantom. He reappeared at the crater’s lip, armored hand raised and sword glittering.

A sea of blades sprang to life in the night air behind him.

Riku threw both hands out to his side as they came crashing down on him, their sharp tips exploding against the barrier that sprung up to his defense. The barrage bled on for what felt like an eternity, filling his grave with a veil of smoke and black soot. When it subsided, there was a momentary silence.

Mozenrath opened his mouth to speak, only to be interrupted by the recoil of his own attack. A ripple of blinding light flashed across the crater and swallowed him whole, propelling him backward through the air until he slammed into the cliff face beneath his castle. Riku advanced to the crater’s mouth, Braveheart in hand, ready to march upon the defeated.

Mozenrath propped himself up as his foe approached.

“You think you’re so different,” he rasped. “So much better than I am. You’re no different than Aladdin. Always thinks he’s above the things I do. Like things would have turned out different for him.”

Riku didn’t say anything as he entered the plaza where Mozenrath landed. Behind him, the sheet face of the cliffside was decimated, its facade scintillated by a sea of pinpricks that could only have been caused by Riku’s Reflect spell.

“You’re not graceful. You’re not powerful.”

The wizard spit darkness onto the cobble walk beneath him and staggered to his feet. The gauntlet over his hand still burned, but its power appeared to be waning. Even his armor looked shabbier, Sirocco’s power dampened by the sheer potency of his master’s own magic.

“You’re morally lucky,” Mozenrath decided, bracing himself by stabbing the hilt of his blade into the space between two stones. Riku regarded him with a pitiful indifference.

“Do you think that’s all that separates us, Mozenrath?”

“No,” he admitted, breathing heavy.

It was only a second, but Riku paused when he saw the regret there, burning in Mozenrath’s eyes. It was a spark, hidden beneath the fires of his wrath.

“You’ve got a bad habit of dwelling on the past,” the wizard said, that spark vanishing with a whisper. “I don’t have the same problem. I’m more of a forward thinker!”

The stones beneath Riku’s feet rumbled, and suddenly the blade in Mozenrath’s hands sang. Riku braced himself, but as the wizard lifted his hand to the heavens, he knew that there was no way to tell what could come next.

“Don’t you agree, Riku?!”

Riku looked up, expecting to see a bolt of lightning. What he found instead was a new moon hanging in the sky, orbited by the long eel he saw earlier. It offered him a toothy grin as Mozenrath vanished and a world of writhing, black horror waited overtop of him, backed by a halo of golden fire.

It was a meteor made entirely of Mozenrath’s energy.

All the breath in his lungs fell away, replaced by hollow fear and the understanding that Mozenrath intended to bring that meteor crashing down into the cliffside. It would destroy his own castle if it fell, taking the dungeons and everything over top of them with it. He spared a glance at the rock face, then turned back to Mozenrath with fury.

“You’re going to bring your own palace to the ground, just to kill me? What else is left for you, Mozenrath? There’s going to be nothing left to burn!”

“All the better,” the wizard sneered, removing his turban and tossing it to the ground. The red jewel in its belly glinted, dimly, in the light cast by the power burning through his gauntlet. “There’s only one way you can stop this, and you know it.”

Riku said nothing, but straightened in his place. He knew Mozenrath was right. His own power wasn’t going to be enough to destroy the sword of damocles hanging over his head. “I’m not your pawn.”

“Then prove it. Show me that power — that green flame you used to burn away my shade. Let me see that power of yours that comes from another world! Show me the potential of the stars or I’ll bring this meteor down on Aladdin and that pretty little girlfriend of yours!”

Mozenrath’s cape billowed behind his armor, and he grinned from the heart at the sight of Riku’s blade rising to cover his left eye. The right still glared ahead, fixed on Mozenrath like a sight.

There was a flash and then the roar of crackling flame. Green fire bled through Riku’s pores, spreading out around him like a cloak of his own. It snapped and bit at the air, stuck to his figure, and whispered as it burned in his eyes. It took him only a second for him to understand, to realize the truth of the situation.

“This was only ever a game to you,” Riku gathered. “You did all this to bring me here. To grow your power. This wasn’t about Aladdin at all.”

No, Aladdin was just a pawn. Riku, by comparison, was the more valuable morsel. It was probably the veilfire that Mozenrath wanted, the shades of Maleficent’s power that still burned in his veins like a poison.

“If you think you can take this power of mine for yourself, you’re mistaken. It’s like you said, Mozenrath. I paid my price. Now it’s time to pay yours.”

The fire crackling around his body surged up Braveheart’s length and burned brighter than ever before at the mention of Mozenrath’s err.

The sorcerer was unphased.

“If you think my power came without its cost, you haven’t been paying attention.”

Riku swept his blade through the air, cutting through the empty space beside him. Wind scattered beneath his blade, buffeted the cliff wall, and knocked loose the rock there. Chunks of debris, still left behind by the explosion that blasted him into the city in the first place, rumbled in response to his newfound strength.

He took one step forward, followed by another, and another. Mozenrath flexed his fingers and a coronet of black fire jettisoned away from his meteor, imbuing him with deadly power. It burned across his sickly blade and, as he faced down with the warrior from another world that dared challenge him, reflected his twisted grin.

“Good. Come then, to face your death with some hutzpah!”

* * *

Nigil and Ori were soon joined by a swell of other Mamluks, their eyes whited out by the power of Naminé’s magic. Her ability to manipulate memories did well to erase the hold Mozenrath kept over them, but it was hard for her to say how long that effect would last.

For all she knew, it was permanent.

More likely, though, it was just a temporary solution. She knew that if Mozenrath tried to reassert his control over his henchmen, he could probably restore them to their hostile state. She knew how to change a heart, but Mamluks didn’t have hearts anymore, not in the conventional sense.

They were thralls, puppets like she once thought herself to be.

That thought left her with an ache in her chest as she strolled through the dungeons, searching as quietly as she could for Aladdin’s cell. She knew it was supposed to be somewhere nearby, but the exact spot eluded her. Mozenrath frequently moved him, and none of her Mamluks knew the whole of where he was meant to be held.

It took her the better part of ten minutes to find a cell with a person in it at all, and that person turned out to be a skeleton. He, unlike the growing tide of Mamluks that shambled along behind her, didn’t provide much help. Despite that, the thought of faltering never entered her mind.

Riku asked her to find Aladdin, and so she would find him, come hell or highwater.

Thankfully, her search didn’t yield either.

He was in the very last cell on the bottom most rung of Mozenrath’s underground prison. Jasmine wasn’t with him, nor was his genie, and his lack of company left him looking worse than he ever had. The man she remembered from Sora’s memories was brilliant and vivid, with a dash of mad-genius thrown in to offset his manic energy. The man she saw now was paler than she remembered, and she wasn’t sure that saying he was “still alive” counted the same as being “lively.”

It looked as though he hadn’t eaten in days, though she could see a pale of water in the corner of his cell that told her he’d at least been kept hydrated. Coated in a thin layer of the same, black sand that Agrabah was now buried under, his skin was a litany of lesser cuts and sore, purpling bruises.

“Aladdin?”

The former thief turned in response to the sound of an unfamiliar voice, and his face lit up into the one she remembered.

“You’re not Mozenrath,” he smiled, crawling toward the bars. “You’re not Mozenrath!”

His fingers wrapped around the bars of his cell and for a second, she wondered if he was going to notice the Mamluks shambling along behind her. When he didn’t comment on them, she took that as a sign that he held a general understanding of what she was doing.

“Don’t tell them that,” she smiled in return. “They might not be too happy if they get the chance to think about what’s happening.”

“Oh, I’m not worried. You seem a lot more powerful than you look, and if the looks on their faces are any indicator… it’s gonna take something pretty crazy to break them out of your, uh…”

It wasn’t hard to tell that he wanted to call it mind control.

“Your spell!”

Tactful, that Aladdin.

Naminé stepped away from the bars, letting her Mamluks get to work in cutting through enough of the metal that Aladdin could wriggle free. He was about halfway out when he turned to her, the flat of his stomach caught in between two metal rods.

“Wait, what about… is Riku here with you?”

“Yes,” she said, looking a little hurt that he thought Riku might abandon him. “Of course. He came to save you.”

“He shouldn’t have,” Aladdin grunted, wrenching himself free of the bars.

“Why not?”

“It’s a trap! Mozenrath wants his body! The gauntlet on his arm is killing him. It’s why we took it from him in the first place. We locked it away and put him as far away from it as we could, but…”

Naminé frowned.

“He found it,” she guessed.

“Not just that. He found it and that monster, Sirocco! That thing tore Agrabah to pieces in minutes. We couldn’t stop him.”

“But you tried, didn’t you?”

“I mean, yeah,” Aladdin said, finally free. She reached out to heal his wounds, and flinched away for just a second, as if half-expecting her touch to burn him. Instead, her magic worked as intended, soothing his wounds without fail. “But we couldn’t beat him. I tried to get a message out with that parchment Riku left me, but…”

“I’m guessing that didn’t work out?”

“No,” he explained, looking a little sour. “He shouldn’t have come. After he saw Riku chasing the gauntlet…”

“He decided to take his body instead of yours.”

“Exactly.”

Naminé felt the castle outside rumble beneath the force of the battle raging through the capital’s streets. She could feel the magic burning outside, and a massive source of it building up in the sky overhead. It felt as if it were siphoning energy away from the storm burning in the heavens. There was another source of power, too, mixed up with Mozenrath’s. It was hard to tell if it belonged to Riku or not, but it felt potent.

“I wonder why he wants Riku’s body,” she thought aloud. “He’s a Keyblade Master, but… I’m not sure what he’s hoping to gain. Not exactly. Why do to Riku what Destane tried to do to him?”

She glanced over toward Nigil, whose memories gave her great insight on the way to Aladdin’s cell.

“He thinks that Riku could handle the gauntlet’s wear and tear,” she surmised. “He’s a touch more powerful than you are. His body is made of stronger stuff. If he took your body, it would only be temporary.”

Her companion didn’t look convinced.

“No way to know for sure, I guess,” Aladdin shrugged, running his hands over the wounds she balmed away with her spell. He leered over at a Mamluk, and then glanced up when the ceiling threatened to buckle against the force of a cacophonous explosion. Naminé put a knuckle to her lips, lost in thought for just long enough that Aladdin didn’t want to be left staring.

“It’s possible that…”

She paused, glancing up at him, face full of stoic understanding.

“Riku’s body is used to handling power sources that go beyond mortal limits,” she said. Her thoughts drifted back to the green flames that burned forever in the annals of his replica’s now-lost memories, the flames he swore not to use, and the flames she could feel burning outside.

“Why’s that matter?”

“The darkness is devouring Mozenrath,” she explained. “If he doesn’t find a new body, he’ll die.”

“He should be dead already.”

Naminé didn’t have an answer for that.

“Last time, he used some kinda artifact, thing,” Aladdin recalled. “I can’t explain it, not really. His plan was to force me out, but it didn’t work that way… I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s figured out how to improve his process. He understands magic better than even Genie does.”

That didn’t set Naminé’s mind at ease.

“We have to stop him,” she decided. “And soon.”

“Are you kidding? You hear the fight going on out there. You’ll be blown to smithereens if you walk out there now,” he said. “No offense.”

“If Mozenrath finds a way to get a hold of Riku’s body, we’ll have far larger problems.”

“It’s too dangerous. You could die out there.”

“I know,” she replied, her expression unchanged. Her fingers clasped together over her chest, gathered at her neck, and played at the column of her throat. “But that’s okay.”

When Aladdin saw that he couldn’t change her mind, he accepted her resolve with a grim sort of nod.

“Then if you can, try to get the gauntlet off of him. His magic is way weaker without it. I’ll go for help, and see if I can’t get through to Genie. I made him take everyone else somewhere far away, where Mozenrath wouldn’t be able to find them.”

“Genie is a good friend,” she said, nodding in return.

“So’s Riku, now. Stay safe out there, okay?”

Aladdin extended his hand, and though she didn’t immediately know to, Naminé shook it as way of saying thanks.

“You too, Aladdin.”

He raced off down the hallway, offering her and her horde of friendly Mamluks only one over-the-shoulder look before he disappeared out of sight. Outside, the world rumbled once again, brought to bear beneath the weight of the battle raging outside.

She wished his jacket were still around her shoulders.


	5. Stay Gold

Mozenrath’s blade came down hard as Riku surged forward to greet him on the rooftop, veilfire burning at his back. Steel clashed against steel as Riku pushed him back, their bodies separated only by the sparks flying and the burn of magical flame that powered them. Like sawblades, their weapons whirled off of each other as Riku pushed hard to the left and spun around Mozenrath, cutting a deep stripe down his back that rippled with an afterburn of green flame. He stumbled forward and twirled in response, eyes wild and blade already on a collision course with Riku’s neck.

The keybearer hopped back, Mozenrath’s strike whiffing by centimeters. Black power trailed in the wake of his blade as he persevered, striking again and again in an effort to shatter Riku’s raised guard.

“There we go,” he hummed, throat hoarse and eyes burning with black power. “That’s the strength I was looking for! Show me more!”

He lashed out with a wild strike that went wide, and Riku stepped in to close the distance between them. His fingertips flashed green and a jet of emerald fire sent the wizard flying into the rooftop, followed by a trail of embers that conflagrated into a massive explosion in the seconds after. Impassive, Riku watched it blossom and spread, and as the flames were replaced by smoke, he cocked his fingers back again.

A new bloom caught on the wind and shook the cliff face, shaking the mountain and dispersing a sea of green lightning bugs that drifted toward the ground. Mozenrath came blasting out of the wreckage, violet armor singed by Riku’s power. Bouts of green fire burned across his shoulders, only to flicker out as he swung for the fences again — eager to take the persistent warrior’s head off in a mad dash by him.

Riku flipped backward and the blow sailed harmlessly over his head. His toes had only just touched the ground when a rush of deadly wind caught him off guard, and Mozenrath’s backdraft knocked him off of his feet. He stumbled backward off of the rooftop and vanished into a burst of violet light, reappearing in the air over the wizard’s head two streets down.

His first blow sent them both crashing through the rooftop of a never-proud storefront, and his second reduced the whole thing to rubble. Shattered chunks of stone fell overtop of them and built them a rocky grave, only to be dispersed by the aftermath of a deafening boom that scattered it all to the wind.

Jettisoned back the way he came and out into the open air by the force of the explosion, Riku shielded his face with his forearm. Stony shrapnel cut through his jacket like wind through a wind chime, battered his exposed midsection, and left thin, red slices that fanned out like spiderwebs over his pantlegs.

Mozenrath wasn’t far behind, eager to clash blades once again.

He led with a centered slash that would have cut Riku in two if he didn’t catch it, and as the keybearer knocked it astray he prepared to counterattack — only to be caught by a bolt of lightning as the wizard extended his off-hand and unleashed hell at point blank range.

“Gah!”

Fissures of light crackled in the sky as he went soaring toward the clouds, pursued by a mad demon and the torrent of energy fueling him. A lethal strike came soaring toward his throat and Riku vanished once again, his path charted by glittering purple lines that deposited him on a rooftop near Mozenrath’s still-growing meteor. He could see the sorcerer’s eel still orbiting around it, feeding off of the power in the air. Little veins of emerald light were now interwoven with the comet, but Riku didn’t have the time to process what that might’ve meant.

There was an audible hiss before six city blocks were consumed in a rush of black flame that burned his arms and reduced his jacket to tatters. He shielded himself at the last possible second, rebuffing the worst of the damage.

He was still fighting an uphill battle. He was hardly untouched. The aftermath of blast after deadly blast was burned into his skin, and he looked every bit as hurt as he felt. Only the Veilfire kept him from feeling that pain, replacing the ache he would feel later with a cruel burn that eroded away at the now. He was sacrificing his future for power in the present, a trade that couldn’t be sustained even if he weren’t contending with Mozenrath.

At the thought, Mozenrath dashed down from on high, ankles wreathed in Sirocco’s wind and rivulets of his own, sinister magic. Riku leveled Braveheart at the wizard’s glowing chest and unleashed a barrage of seven veridian starlings, each packed with enough magical power to lay Hades low.

Mozenrath smacked the first one aside, rolled away from the second, and slammed into the third. The rest swallowed him whole, reducing the sky around him to a grim, black smear. Refusing to let up, Riku hefted his key high into the air.

“Veilthunder!”

The tattered sparks that lingered in the smoke cloud around Mozenrath caught to consume the whole thing in a burst of black and green thunder. It was no surprise when the wizard came flying through the cloud a moment later, backed by a rush of Riku’s own power. With a flick of his wrist and a swing of his blade, that same power assailed the rooftop around him, reduced to strings of stolen lightning with only a semblance of their master’s original strength.

One impacted right behind him as he wove backward, blasted clear the ledge he intended to step on, and left him tumbling back over the rooftop. Mozenrath closed the gap an instant before he could fall, blade swinging and glowing in the light of his meteor.

Riku deflected the first strike before the second knocked him to the earth. He rolled ass over end onto his shoulders and rose just in time to catch his overeager foe with a heavy spin-slash that sent him careening into some rubble off to the left.

The silver-haired master hopped after him and their battle resumed, the two of them dancing through the wreckage of a dead city with a green and black meteor burning overhead. For every two of Mozenrath’s strikes, Riku replied in kind with one of his own.

An overhead strike came down on his guard, and Riku’s boot sailed into Mozenrath’s gut unimpeded. An instant later, there was a flash of black lightning that swallowed their debris-pile whole, and the two of them came bolting out the other side with ash trailing off of their shoulders. Riku roared and struck hard, knocking the sorcerer’s blade aside and catching him with a slash across the chest. It carved through his armor like paper, dispersing Sirocco’s crimson gaze.

A black blow nicked his left leg and Riku swept the wizard’s feet out from under him with a one handed slash. Mozenrath retorted by lashing out with a quick kick, hoping to bring Riku down with him — but the keybearer leapt over it and sent his downed foe skittering with a forceful kick of his own. Mozenrath rolled onto his side and came skidding to a stop beneath his meteor, face contorted in pain and frustration.

He lifted a hand to fire off a bolt of energy, but Riku was already on top of him. A jet of black fire spread between them, but he caught it with his off-hand, dispersing it with a flicker of green light that left a grave of fireflies to die out in the air around them. Mozenrath roared with fury, his eyes shimmered with power, and Riku knew immediately what was to come. The air around them changed, pressurized by a sudden influx of magic.

His barrier came up the instant before a rush of thunder would have swallowed them whole. It cratered the street around them instead, leaving them on a pillar of crumbling stone in the middle of the Black Capital’s already decimated plaza.

As the blastwave subsided, Riku leveled Braveheart’s tip at the sorcerer’s throat. “Is this the power you wanted to see, Mozenrath?”

“You think you’re so mighty,” the wizard hissed. Inch by inch, the black magic wrapped around his body faded. Riku, breathing heavy overtop him, straightened.

“Mighty enough to stop you,” he retorted.

“We’ll see about that. Haven’t you noticed, Riku? That power of yours is dwindling, just like mine.”

Riku hadn’t noticed. It had been so long since he last called upon Maleficent’s magic… other than the stinging pain that turned the blood in his veins to magma, he hadn’t noticed any unusual drain.

“It’s a part of me, now,” Mozenrath explained. “As soon as I saw you use that emerald flame, I knew you had no idea what kind of power you were toying with. You didn’t know what it was capable of, or what you could use it for. But I knew exactly how to use it.”

The silver-haired boy’s brow furrowed.

For what couldn’t have been the first time, he knew he was missing something.

“Only a sturdy body can handle that otherworldly power of yours, Riku. It’s just like you said. The darkness exacts its price, eventually. This gauntlet will fail me, make no mistake of that. But it won’t fail you. You’re stronger than me, I admit that.”

A chill ran down Riku’s spine.

“What are you getting at?”

“I’m going to kill you,” Mozenrath said. “I’m going to do what needs to be done and take that body of yours. Then, once it’s under my control, I’m going to use the magic I gathered from you and channel it through this gauntlet of mine.”

Mozenrath laughed, low and cold. For the first time, he looked like the boy he would have been if he’d never found the gauntlet in the first place. If the darkness hadn’t taken him like the winter did the fall.

“Big talk, for a man on his back. It’s over for you.”

“Oh, boy, you really are a putz, aren’t you?”

Black shackles broke through the stone around them. Long, shivering chains latched themselves around Riku’s ankles and pulled at his left arm. He resisted, fighting like hell to escape as the magic burned into his skin. He slashed at one with Braveheart, dispersed it in a flash of green light, and then winced as Maleficent’s magic took its painful toll. The chain was replaced an instant later, and as Mozenrath rose, Riku knew their battle was coming to a close.

He raged against his binds, lashing out with a heavy strike. Mozenrath lifted his hand and the chains pulled the blow down, tethering Riku to the earth. He battled against them in defiant fury, but the wizard entertained none of his rebellion. As the magical links pulled him to the ground, Mozenrath cackled.

“I can’t believe you didn’t stop to think for even a single second,” he taunted. “I’m a sorcerer. I could have teleported out in a gomorrah minute the instant I faced any actual danger from you.”

Despite that, it was hard to miss the blood smeared over his lip like paint.

“Let me go,” Riku growled. “Before you make this worse on yourself. You can’t control the veilfire. It’ll burn through that gauntlet eventually.”

“I don’t need it to last forever,” Mozenrath grinned. “There’s a theme, if you’ve been paying attention. I think long-term, Riku. That’s the difference between us.”

“If you think that’s the only difference, you’re delusional. As if I’d just give you my body. Or my magic.”

“Oh, you don’t have give me anything.”

Riku struggled to lift Braveheart despite his bindings, but the sorcerer kicked it away with a flashy boot that sent it spinning through the air. Its blade came down into the cliff face, where it waited in the stone for its doomed master.

“If you were conscious, or even alive, I might need your permission,” Mozenrath explained. “Thankfully, I’ve learned my lesson from Aladdin. I thought that taking his body would be simple, but no. It never is. Not with you heroes.”

He turned on a dime, leveling his hand at Riku.

There was a flash of black light and then a jitter of lightning sent him skittering across the dirt, pulling his chains through the stone behind him. He came to a halt at the base of the rock wall that led to Mozenrath’s castle, caked in blood, soot, and black sand.

“You’re going to die, and once you’re dead, I’m going to put myself in your body.”

“Magic doesn’t work that way,” Riku grunted, struggling to stand up. “You can’t just take and take, Mozenrath.”

“I’m not taking anything,” the wizard admitted, his expression one of pained offense. “Magic requires a source, you know. All magic does. What, pray tell, do you think powers a man like me? The darkness alone?”

He laughed.

“I knew power long before I knew the dark.”

Riku groaned and reached for Braveheart. Another surge of magical power laid him low and he lurched back down the cliff face, his chains holding him in place.

“All magic has a source,” he repeated. “And that source is the human soul. It’s a man’s will, the sweat off of his brow. You work harder than anyone else so that you never have to work again. Every soul has its own power, and that power is unique. No one else can use it. Even if I were to just take your body now, it wouldn’t respond to me.”

“I don’t see how this helps you,” Riku breathed.

“In order to take your body, I need to drain it, first. Scoop out all the pieces that’re you and replace them with all the pieces that make up a man like me.”

“That won’t work, you said it yourself! My body will still just reject you.”

“Think, Riku. What do you think I’ve been siphoning off your magic for?”

When Riku didn’t answer, Mozenrath cackled again.

“Destane taught me everything, you know. He taught me how to deepen my power with the darkness that now wracks my body like a plague, how to cut it like water and wine,” Mozenrath explained. Every word was poisoned with a venomous edge. “He was like a father to me. If I hadn’t killed him first, he’d have taken my body and burned it to the wick like a candle. This process was his last gift to me. He wanted me to understand every bit of what was happening. I’ll afford you the same mercy.”

Another surge of lightning preceded another pained cry, this one longer than the last. Mozenrath strolled confidently away, his eyes fixed on the meteor overhead.

“I’m going to fool your body into thinking that it’s accepting the fuel source it needs, that veilfire of yours. Sure, it’s cut with my magic, your body won’t be able to tell the difference. Once I’ve filled you up, I’ll kick out the green stuff, and bam.”

Overhead, the comet in the sky blazed. Green fire burned over black, and formed a pale, sickly mixture that defied all Riku knew about magical theory. He couldn’t be sure, but he could feel Mozenrath’s macabre confidence. Whether or not his plan was actually supposed work, he thought it would. That expectation would make the difference.

“After that, I’ll kill your friend, kill that streetrat, and use whatever you came here in to take off to the stars. Goodbye Agrabah, hello greener pastures.”

“I can help you,” Riku swore, pain wracking his every nerve. He was caught in the jaws of Mozenrath’s grisly trap, but he still had his own light. He could still try. “You don’t have to do this. If you turn back now, you can still save yourself. I can guide you.”

Mozenrath turned back to him, his expression changed. It was flecked with so much shrapnel; hurt, worry, fear, loathing, it formed a galaxy of its own in his eyes.

“The light can heal you, if you let it. Give up this crusade. Leave the gauntlet behind. Prove that you’re every bit as powerful as you think you are.”

“You think me weak? Stupid?”

“No,” Riku admitted. “I think you’re scared. Scared to lose, scared to die. Let me help you. Maybe I’ve been there. Maybe I can find the way back with you, and we can undo the damage you’ve done to yourself.”

For a long minute, backlit by his angel and his shoulders caked in soot, Mozenrath stared Riku down. Something that escaped definition — regret, perhaps, or simple longing — played in his eyes. He glanced down at the gauntlet in his hand, which still sizzled with menacing power.

“No,” he whispered.

“It’s too late for that. Whatever redemption you think there is for me, I’ll find it on my own. I don’t need your pity, just your power.”

He lifted the gauntlet and a roar of flame blasted Riku through the cliff face and into the dusty confines of Mozenrath’s prison. He skittered across the floor and the chains holding him vanished, replaced by curls of black fire that hung around his wrist until they branded his flesh with the burn of their power. There was no fade to black; he was there one minute, gone the next.

* * *

Naminé shielded herself with her arms when Riku came tumbling through the hole in the wall. Tattered banners of black flame churned alongside him and burnt out against the gray stone floor of the dungeon as he rolled to a halt at her feet, flat on his back, eyes closed. His jacket was shredded and scorched by the fire now dying on his wrists and ankles; cuts and bruises in varying degrees littered his arms and legs, and there was a massive gash over his chest that had been cauterized by an earlier burst of fire.

She glanced up, heart in her throat, to see Mozenrath marching through the breach he’d created. His lips were curled upward into a twisted grin, his eyes alight with the rush of impending victory. He reeked of blood and smoke, the blade in his hand eroding into a trickling trail of ash that followed in his wake. He drew himself to full height, body still wreathed in his otherworldly armor, and looked down at her from afar.

Outside, a cruel, veridian sun backlit the decimated world. Smoke rose in the distance, and she could see chunks of rubble littering the square. Their battle was fierce, and now, it seemed, over.

“You must be Naminé,” he drawled, eyes flickering to the army of white-eyed Mamluks that followed her. “Interesting work.”

He flexed his wrist, and her army fell away, replaced by black sand.

She knelt at Riku’s side, lithe fingers finding his shoulders.

“Riku,” she whispered, urgently.

Her heart thundered in her chest, but he didn’t reply. His head lolled and she pulled him onto her lap, hoping beyond hope that he might wake up. She’d never seen him — or his replica — so hurt. He’d always been the definition of quiet confidence, possessed of an unshakeable faith that defied reproach. He was the sort of boy who didn’t mind texting her in the middle of a fierce battle, who faced the darkest fates without a word.

Riku was steel, and now, crumpled and dented, he lay in her lap hanging by the thinnest of margins. She could feel his pulse slowing, and it wasn’t hard to notice the way his breath grew more shallow by the second. He was fading fast, reduced to rust by Mozenrath’s power.

“You need to wake up,” she said. “You need to…”

The words defied her. They didn’t defy Mozenrath.

“He won’t be getting up. Not in the way you think, anyway.”

The black sand around her fanned out, spread by the way the wizard’s fingers curled into a fist at his side. She watched as it formed an arc-shaped wall behind her, cutting her off from escape.

“And you won’t be getting up at all.”

A bolt of glistering lightning shivered from the ends of his fingertips, only to meet the face of a brilliantly shining barrier that sprang up in her defense. Magic rolled off of each, shimmering plate, and then dispersed in the air between them.

“Insulting,” Mozenrath hissed.

“Riku,” Naminé breathed, cradling his head in her hands. “You need to stand up. Please.”

She couldn’t let things end for him. Not when they were so close. Aladdin was already far gone. Genie would be coming soon, just as soon as Aladdin called out to him from a safe place. They just needed a few minutes more. She just needed him to hang on for a few minutes more, to stand up one more time in her defense.

How could she forget the promise he made her that day, when he first extended her his hand? When he came to absolve himself of his replica’s duty, and took it up as his own instead? His oath wasn’t hollow then, and she refused to believe that it could be hollow even as the memory tightened like a noose around her neck.

“Stand up,” she pleaded.

“Please. One more time.”

Mozenrath laughed, pitiless on the other side of her barrier. Another sheet of black flame assailed it, and she listened with dread as the plates holding him at bay cracked.

There were no tears in her. She did not cry, even as her first and last defense threatened to buckle beneath the weight of his black power.

Her lips sank to Riku’s forehead. Undercut by the scent of copper and burnt leather, she could still smell the sea, feel the thunder brimming under his skin. Vicariously, his pain burned in her as her fingers parted his hair.

“Fulfill your promise to Sora,” she whispered, lips trailing from his brow. She pressed them to the borders of his jaw, and for only a moment, he stirred.

“Don’t die here,” she insisted, cupping his face with her hands. “Forget all your hurt. All your suffering. Instead...”

Naminé pressed her lips to his, desperate, her fingers alive with swells of white light.

“Stay with me!”

Riku awoke from his nightmares with a start, eyes lit by her light. It leaked through every wound, burned in every cut, and spread like water over every one of his bruises. It poured from his lips like a cry for hallelujah as Naminé drew away from him. On the other side of her barrier, Mozenrath paused, finally struck by what he was seeing.

“Impossible,” he spat. “I drained him of everything he had. I took everything!”

The light in Riku’s eyes faded as he came to, gaze locked onto Naminé’s and every breath still a labor. He was still hurt. She couldn’t heal everything. His bones were still broken, body still battered… but he was alive. Mozenrath, on the other hand, looked ready for defeat. His armor was cracked and fading, his black-sand blade almost completely evaporated.

Step by step, Riku staggered to his feet. The fingers on his left hand cocked back, and he summoned Braveheart in a flash of scintillating white. Naminé stood behind him, no longer phased by the fear that wracked her in the moments prior. Together, they were far stronger than either of them were alone.

“We’ve got to stop him,” Riku grunted. “Before he drains your power too. He’s a thief. Taking every ounce of magic he can. I think it’s the black sand. As long as we’re around it, he can absorb our magic.”

“Very astute of you,” Mozenrath laughed. “But it’s still too late. Her power isn’t enough to stop me. It’s barely enough to keep you breathing. Come! Face me! Die again!”

The barrier keeping them apart shattered like glass. Riku advanced through its remains, Keyblade in hand. With a sharp exhalation, he cocked it back over his shoulder, extended his free hand to gauge the distance, and nodded. He would meet Mozenrath’s challenge, even if it was his last.

“Don’t lose,” Naminé commanded, barely audible over the crackle of flame.

“I won’t.”

Riku surged forward like the tide, vanishing into an array of brilliant light that reforged his body just in front of Mozenrath. A rush of black sand took him from the ankles up and he fled, dispersed into granules too small to see. Naminé rushed outside as the action grew too fast for her to follow with her eyes, aware of the sounds of the battle still raging inside of the dungeons.

The black paper sun that hung in the sky over the city was gargantuan. Its size defied belief, its surface writhed, comprised of a thousand blanching flames. Some of crackled green, others black, all were representatives of a power beyond what she expected.

She stared up at her goliath, eyes seeking some sort of weak point. Riku couldn’t last forever, even with her power keeping him up. It was her strength that fueled him now, not his own, and Mozenrath’s magic greatly outpaced hers. Even wounded, he held a significant advantage in understanding. If he overcame Riku, he would destroy her like he had his homeland, like he would all the stars in the sky.

Naminé shook her head.

Riku wouldn’t lose.

That knowledge didn’t give her any sort of clue on how to handle the meteor. It was easily the size of a small moon, and the power burgeoning in it was unfathomable. She could feel the same energy that fueled Mozenrath’s Mamluks, entertwined with an energy that she knew belonged to Riku. There were other sources in there too, cut with Mozenrath’s like wine. Her brow furrowed.

She could feel Nigil in there. Ori, too, sprinkled in with all of the other damned souls that followed her to their deaths. Beneath it, she raised her hand and drew one free like water from a tap. Black sand roared and twisted toward her, and then fell, golden, to the street. No longer did Nigil’s power burn within the sun overhead, and no longer did she feel quite so helpless.

* * *

Riku kicked Mozenrath through three stone walls, but the wizard hardly flinched. He scrambled to his feet in a prison cell and cocked his left hand back, conjuring a sea of vipers from thin air that raced toward the Keyblade master pursuing him. Riku didn’t so much as blink; he cocked his fingers back and a swell of orange fire rose in the air before him, catching each viper and reducing them to dust before they could make contact.

Then, bound to his will, that wall of fire surged forward in the form of a blossom that swept Mozenrath off of his feet. The wizard lifted his gauntlet in his defense, caught the brunt of the wave with it, and grinned maniacally when the wall faded into smoke.

“You’re still weak. Her power won’t save you.”

Riku didn’t bother responding. Instead, he strolled in to close the gap with an across-the-chest slash that reduced the stone over Mozenrath’s ducking head to dust. The wizard scrambled to the wall and muttered something under his breath. Swirls of black sand curled in from all sides, worming its way through the stone to create a vortex of churning power in the center of the room. From its depths, four Mamluks sprang to life around Riku, blocking his way forward.

He bashed one’s face in with Braveheart’s pommel, slashed through another, and deflected a strike from the third before he had time to blink. The offending Mamluk staggered left and he smashed his elbow into its sunken nose, spraying the fourth in a jet of cold, black blood that blinded it before it could rush in.

Normally, he would have questioned how that sort of thing worked. He knew they didn’t see. The undead rarely did. Some bodies were still creatures of reflex, however, and he didn’t dare question that until after his Keyblade carved the thing from its clavicle to its hip. The final remaining soldier froze before it could strike at Riku’s exposed back.

Mozenrath scowled.

“What…? Attack him, you mook!”

The creature fell, its sand-blood flush with gold as it crumbled.

“Your plan is failing you, Mozenrath,” Riku explained. “Naminé is unraveling that meteor of yours. It’ll all be over soon.”

“I’ll deal with her first, then,” the wizard hissed.

His body faded into black sand and rushed by Riku’s left side, but the Keyblade Master was far too ready for another escape attempt. Leveling Braveheart at the wall, he sectioned it off with a dozen brilliantly shimmering plates. Mozenrath’s sand bounced off of his barrier and he reformed, eyes once again glowing with what must’ve been the last of his power.

All around the room, hundreds of similar plates sprang up like blades of grass. They wormed their way out of the walls, shimmered in the dark, and caged them in together.

“You don’t get to leave. Not after all you’ve done.”

“Out of mercy, boy?”

“Give up. Can’t you see it’s over? You’ve got no options left. You won’t escape from here. Not while I’m still standing.”

“You think this is the end? You total rube, don’t you know there’s always another trick up my sleeve?”

“Don’t try it, Mozenrath.”

Mozenrath laughed and lifted his gauntleted hand high into the air. Sirocco sprang forth from his chest like a beast uncaged, his wispy body suddenly more tangible than ever before. Riku caught the monster’s jaws with Braveheart, boots skidding toward the plates behind him. He glanced over his shoulder while Mozenrath watched, ungloved hand already cocked back. A bolt of black lightning raced free of the ends of his fingers—

Riku spun, kicked Sirocco away, and watched as the bolt of lightning bounced off of his spell’s plate and rebounded back into Mozenrath. The wizard’s eyes barely had time to widen before it struck him.

He crumpled against the barrier and Sirocco surged forward again, jaws snapping.

This time, Riku rolled to the side, letting the beast bound right by him. It came skidding to a halt inches from the wall, and then turned toward Riku just in time to see the fist flying toward its snout.

“Lights out!”

His blow slammed hard into the wolf’s face, staggering it just enough that it smacked into the reflecting plates. Wind magic coursed through its body, ripped it asunder, and scattered it into the breeze it belonged to. Balmy recoil buffeted Riku’s face and chest, ruffling his hair and leaving behind thin cuts along both cheeks. Unphased, he shook the pain from his now lacerated hand and glanced over toward the still-downed Mozenrath.

* * *

Riku emerged from the cliff face with the still unconscious Mozenrath slung over his shoulder. The wizard’s gauntlet was closed into a fist and tied to Riku’s belt, something that Naminé felt thankful for as she turned to face him. Overhead, the meteor that threatened the world below was gone, its place in the sky taken by the glow of the real sun. The maelstrom raging over the castle was likewise gone, and the sand in the plaza was aubade with gold.

The capital was now flush with color, but its skeleton was still gray. Slabs of ancient stone that hadn’t seen the light of day in decades threatened to crumble at any moment, and the world beneath their feet still hummed with aftershocks of the power Mozenrath once channeled through the land.

“You did it,” Riku breathed, putting Mozenrath down on the sand.

He looked like any sleeping boy might’ve, not unlike Aladdin.

Naminé stepped in to greet him, hand curled behind her back, fingers wrapped around the elbow on her other arm. The smile on her face was a mile wide.

“Of course I did.”

He couldn’t resist.

Instead of blanching or making the small talk he felt safe with, he stepped in and took her face in his hands. She squirmed a little, but the way his lips met hers relieved her of all doubt. She eased into him, relaxed, and then promptly turned red the second he pulled away.

Clearing her throat, she nodded.

“Yes, well,” Naminé managed. “I think that our next move is to wait for Aladdin. He said he would be back with his Genie.”

“Right.”

“We should… perhaps restrain Mozenrath? I don’t feel any power coming from him, but it’s best to be safe, isn’t it?”

She was still blushing.

He thought that was cute.

Riku leveled Braveheart at the downed wizard’s body. A flash of light sprang from the weapon’s tip, bringing to life a series of chains that locked him up from the neck down.

“There. That’ll hold him until Aladdin gets back.”

“Aren’t we going to wait for him?”

“No.”

Turning to her, Riku banished Braveheart. It faded out into a sea of sparks that rained against the now golden sands beneath his feet.

“It’s better to leave this to him. It’s his grudge, not ours.”

Naminé nodded.

“So, are we returning to Radiant Garden then?”

“Is that where you want to go?”

She paused at that, frozen by the thought.

“I’m… not sure.”

Riku leaned forward, brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes, and then took her by the hand.

“Do you trust me?”

“I do.”

When Aladdin returned, they were gone, ghosts left to play in the sand.


End file.
